I am trying to create a self driving GoKart using the 9bot GoKart Pro link. The throttle is controlled by a pedal and it appears to function a bit like a potentiometer. There are three wires (red, black, white) and I used a voltage meter to check the DC voltage between the pairs at off (pedal not depressed at all), minimum depression and max depression. Table below.
I did kindof figure out that B-W voltage plus the R-W voltage equals the R-B voltage.
So what i would like to do is both measure the signal with an Arduino Uno (and Pyfirmata) and later, after an AI model is built using that measurement, send a control signal with the Arduino Uno (and pyfirmata).
So is the idea that I somehow put the UNO between the Black-White in parallel to read the signal? I'm envisioning somehow tapping the wires and putting the black to ground and the white to one of the analog ports. Will that work?
And then when I want to do the signaling to control the device, can I use the uno? Do I unplug the wire from the gokart and wire it to the board? How can I get 8V to the GoKart?
Does any of this risk frying the UNO or the gokart?
Thank you for the rapid response. Any thoughts on reducing from 8V to 5V? I looked around on the internet and you can add resistors to the signal to go from 8V to 5V but if I remember correctly that can bump up the current. Is there something I need to look out for?
Also, any thoughts on how that would be wired? Is it black wire to resistor to analog pin and then white to ground? Thanks in advance for any advice.
If the white wire doesn't go higher than 5V above Ground you should be able to just stick it into an Arduino analog input. You can probably then connect a PWM (analogWrite()) output through a resistor and capacitor to get a half-decent DC voltage output. Feeding that into the White wire should work.
Start with the voltmeter. If you get 0V between the Black wire and the frame that means there is no current running. Then you can use an Ohmmeter and measure the resistance between the Black wire and the frame. If the resistance is near zero that means they are electrically connected.