Hi All,
I'm having an issue regarding the serial connection (I believe) cutting out occasionally with my Arduino (clone). Here's the scenario:
- Arduino communicates with an Intel NUC PC
- Both are used to control an AGV, I've installed an off the shelf motor controller (DM860I) to control the steering, controlled by the Arduino, using a stepper motor.
- The motor driver is fed by unregulated 24V from a battery, the Arduino is externally powered by a 12V buck converter (also powered by said 24V battery).
- I've placed ferrite filters on the 0V and 24V going into the motor driver, as well as on the motor phase leads.
- IDE version 1.8.13 and the rosserial_arduino package are used to communicate between the Intel NUC and Arduino.
- Baud rate of 50k is used, as higher baud rates cause problems with communication between the NUC and Arduino.
- The specific clone Arduino is here, Rugged MEGA-ET ST (Screw Terminal) — Rugged CircuitsRugged Arduino
When driving around with my AGV in my initial location, I never had any issues with the Arduino losing serial connection after several days of testing. When it was moved to another building, the serial connection would cut out after driving 10m forward, consistently. I removed some noise caused by the motor driver by adding the ferrite filters and the serial connection drop occurred now only about once every 2-3 hours of driving around.
I'm seeing about a 2v p-p on all power lines (24V battery, 12V buck, even the 5V line coming out of the computer to the Arduino...) when driving around. My guess is this noise is causing the problems, but I'm not sure of I'm going down the wrong rabbit hole. The buck converter alone causes a 1v p-p.
The only way to have the Arduino reconnect again is to unplug and plug back in. This issue also came up even while running a simple "hello world" program.
My question is has anyone seen this type of issue before and is there any suggestions on a) how to fix it or reduce it or b) how to possibly reduce the noise more, either on the buck converter side or motor driver side.
Thanks