I am working on my project of active suspension for a light single-seater. Currently, the system has two cylindrical tubes acting as suspension, interconnected by steel cables controlled by a DC motor at the center.
I have a BTS7960 Motor controller with Arduino Nano. The system was functional for a while before during testing I guess the motor was overloaded and since then my motor driver has stopped working.
I have performed a few diagnosis such as running simple motor forward backward commands, blink example on nano to check whether microcontroller is working, checked the connections for continuity, VCC voltage of driver etc, and everything seems to be fine. When i supply the PWM i hear a very small whirring sound from the motor but the shaft wont spin. Connecting directly to the supply, the motor spins at full speed.
What could be the issue with my motor driver H bridge?
Hi Tom,
Thank you for the warm welcome. Yes, I have a DMM, I checked the continuity of the circuit and a few voltages on the driver at signal and output side, according to the datasheet at least, everything seems fine, one thing i noticed is that when i am supplying PWM to the motor, I have 24V at input side from the battery source to the motor driver but the motor is not drawing the 24V from the driver. infact even when i hear the whirring sound from the motor, it is still not drawing anything from the motor driver, I printed the PWM signal in the serial monitor, and PWN is from a potentiometer, still no movement in the motor.
One thing I am trying to do is try to arrange an oscilloscope from the institute to check whether the driver is producing any PWM at all or not. This however I checked by Voltage level, at 0 PWM it has 3.3V and at 255 PWM it has 5.26 V, at LPWM and RPWM each. I am really confused at this point.
PS: I read the rules and will share the schematic and other details with some picture shortly. I am making the schematic now.
that was my initial thought, that I burned the driver however all the voltages are drawn correctly by the driver except at the output, the motor wont draw any voltage. To be absolutely sure, I performed a test found in another forum,
@vanillahere
I would suspect poor reflow soldering techniques and poor thermal design on the module.
The tab of the BTS needs a good solid connection to ground. All of the motor current goes through that connection. If they used to little solder paste or made the thermal vias to big, then the connection will be compromised.
