i am doing a research project on remote controlling a go kart. right now i have 3 motors to control that have feed back. i have a motor controller for each that requires a 5v peak PWM signal and an rc receiver unit from futaba that only puts off 3v. i have it set up right now that the rc unit turns a servo that is connected to a potentiometer. can someone help me with code on how to control all three using the arduino but with out using the servo and pots. i would like the arduino to read the pwm signal from the rc unit and then spit it back out at a higher voltage. any suggestions and help is much appreciated.
If all you need is the same PWM signal but at a higher voltage you don't need the arduino at all, a simple transistor will do.
Well one transistor won't be enough if you want voltage amplification and non-inverting output.
i have contemplated using solid state relays and other options, the relays are the best that i have come up with. i have decided that it would be nice to add a micro controller in case we ever wanted to add some programming in future
I've been experimenting with Arduino + RC integration and I usually read the RC signal with PulseIn and then use the Arduino PWM ports for motor control. That's the only key code you need for reading the receivers themselves, just make sure the leads go into the PWM ports (so with Arduino you're stuck with 2 motors and 4 channels)
what do you mean by 2 motors and 4 channels. the motor controlers i have act just like a servo does. i output a pwm signal and it knows what to do. i need to input 3 pwms and output them at a higher voltage. i am also worried about delay since this will be a remote controlled car
Im interested in this, can you post final results when you are finished?
For now i have done testing with the basic servo control with a knob. It works really well. I then attached a servo from the rc unit to the pot of the arduino. This allows the arduino to update very quickly. In the future my electronics teacher suggested i go to a zbasic chip which can multi task. this will allow me to not have any moving parts and avoid possible delays. hopefully i did not waste 100 dollars we will see.
P.S. using the knob control and arduino i calculated that you should be able to do 4 servos without any delay. Thanks for all your help
There is a (rather long) thread here that describes how you can decode rc signals with no moving parts with Arduino http://www.arduino.cc/cgi-bin/yabb2/YaBB.pl?num=1228137503
In the future my electronics teacher suggested i go to a zbasic chip which can multi task.
Your teacher wants you to spend $50 to translate 3 3V square waves to 5V?!!? Is this teacher a primate?
An LM324 and half-a-dozen resistors will do the job for about a buck.