Hey everyone,
Just want to say thanks to all the arduino members for giving me their input on how to start my project.
Based on feedback from the arduino forums and mentors, as well as brainstorming with my team, this is the run down.
Previously in my post Want to install 6 x 12V DC Motors for a Rover to my Arduino Uno, I wanted to build piece by piece a 6 wheel Bogie Rover from PVC pipes.
From feedback from different people, we decided to use Servocity's Bogie Runt Rover
Link: Bogie Runt Rover™ - ServoCity®
I recently bought the rover and will be delivered Saturday.
Now, I need some advice if I did my research properly.
Important specs is that the rover asks for a 6.0V - 7.4V battery.
It has 6 DC Brushed Motors with 6V. The stall current is 0.25 A.
It has a wheel speed of 140 RPM.
1) The battery
The community advised I used a SLA battery, though my mentor suggested I use a 75,000 -10,000 mAh power bank. Thank you arduino community, I will take note of the SLA battery for personal projects. He said to use a power bank that way we don't have to deal with electronics and circuits; he wants it to be simple for us.
I tried googling for 75,000 -10,000 mAh power banks, but it was difficult to find one.
I figured settling for a 50,000 mAh power bank was sufficient, but let me know if it poses problems.
The power bank I was looking at provides 50,000 mAh. At 5V it provides a current of 3A and at 9V it provides a current of 2A. It can go up to 12 V, but I doubt it will go that high.
I was looking at this one:
If 50,000 mAh isn't suffecient, I did find this 60,000 mAh. I bit pricey, but I figured the mAh was just the amount of mAh capacity it could store for a certain time.
This 60,000 mAh has a 5V at 3A and at 12V it provides 1.5 A.
2) The Motor Driver
The arduino community suggested motor drivers from pololu.
a) Choice A:
I believe I will using the Motoron M3S256 Triple Motor Controller Shield for Arduino. It says it can control up to 3 motors in each channel. It states it has 3 channels.
The rover will have six 6V DC motors with each a stall current of 0.25 A.
I ALSO want to add a pan and tilt kit:
The pan and tilt kit comes with two Micro Servos.
Each Micro Servos has a stall current of 0.65 A. Together, 1.3 A.
Source of Micro Servo specs: Servo Motor Micro SG90 - ProtoSupplies
I plan to connect three DC motors in parallel to one channel, and another three DC motors to the second channel, and the two micro servos in parallel to the third channel.
The Motoron M3S256 can support up to 2A per motor.
So 1st channel would have 0.75 A from the 3 motors, the 2nd channel would have 0.75 A from the other 3 motors, and the third channel would have 1.3 A from the two Micro Servos.
If I'm correct, the Motoron M3S256 should be proper for this set up?
Though I ran down to a question. The specs of the Motoron M3S256 says that it supports "three bidirectional, brushed DC motors." I'm not sure if the DC motors are actual bidirectional brushed DC motors.
Here is the source of the DC motors:TT Right Angle Gear Motor (48:1 Ratio, 230RPM) - ServoCity®
And would the Motoron M3S256 support the Micro Servos? If I'm correct, should Micro Servos have their own dedicate Motor Drivers specifically for Micro Servos?
b) Second Choice
I was either going to use the Pololu Dual TB9051FTG Motor Driver Shield for Arduino or the Arduino Motor Shield Rev3.
The Pololu Dual TB9051FTG provides 2.6A per channel, 4.5 V - 28 V.
The Rev3 provides 2A per channel, 5V - 12 V.
The set up would be 3 dc motors in channel 1 so 0.75 in one channel.
The second channel would have the other 3 dc motor driver plus the two Micro servos, so a total of 2.05 A.
3) The Solar Panels
I was going to connect the pan and tilt kit to make manually controlled solar panels.
My mentor suggested to use Solar Panels for cellphones that have USB. He stated that they already have a solar panel regulator to prevent overcharging.
I plan to use this Solar panel.
It provides At 5V it provides a current of 1A. Might be slow, but should still work? Thinking it would take over a day to charge.
4) Bluetooth
I want to make the rover remote controlled, so bluetooth was an idea.
I noticed that the HiLetgo HC-05 Wireless Bluetooth RF Transceiver for Arduino has a lot of videos, documentation, and libraries to reference. There are many open source codes that I can study from as well.
I apologize for the long post.
There are a lot of links since I spent weeks studying.
I don't have access to my mentor and this is a student run project; we don't necessarily have the help needed to do the right and safe choices. We are kind of on our own but don't have too much experience.
Thanks everyone, hope to learn from you guys since you guys taught me how to research arduino materials haha.