December 28, 2011: Featured Engineer

Designing motor drives has been an enjoyable experience. Throughout the years, many individuals have thought of saving some time and reusing my designs on their own projects. It gave me the impression these boards worked! Well, yes, I knew they worked as I kind of test them thoroughly before I release them into the outer world, but you know what I mean ;-)

But imagine my amazement when a few months ago I was asked to participate in an interview relating some of my experiences throughout my life, as I learned about motion control, robotics, embedded systems and electrical engineering overall. This one I was not expecting, I can then you that! The prestigious online magazine EE Web conducted said interview, from which I was honored to participate, and you can find it published HERE. If you want to learn a little bit about the guy behind these small but powerful modules, this is a good place to start. Thanks for taking a look!

September 1, 2011: Dualus DC

It looks tiny, doesn’t it? And well that is because it is! It measures a measly 1.1” by 1.1”. Doesn’t even has connectors, although you can solder either a pair of 100 mils header connectors or your own wires. All you have to solder is an almost insignificant 7 components and that includes the actual driver.

Yes, it is small, tiny, ziltiverous, and you name it, but boy does it packs power! We are dealing here with a battery operated (from 2.5V to 10.8V) dual H Bridge driver capable of delivering up to 2A peak per H Bridge. Oh, you are not tripping; you read quite right! Parallel both H Bridges together and you are talking up to 4A of drive power.

The AE-DualusDC was designed with the dual wheeled robot in mind. Our previous drivers were optimized for 24V operation, but what little robot can pack such a voltage? With this new module you will be able to control both of your DC motors (or even a stepper) until those batteries are dead drained.

The board revolves around an amazing little guy, the DRV8833PWP. We expect to see this board selling like crazy which is why we are working on having this board professionally assembled. But don’t worry! You are welcome to order the bare board and enjoy from the soldering experience as well.

August 21, 2011: Partnering up!

When I started this endeavor about 4 years ago, my intentions were to release my designs as Open Source. And I guess I did. However, an OSD only works well if you have one design; maybe two... When you have 13 released designs, five designs in a hard disk and about three more to come, Open Source just doesn’t cut it anymore.

The idea behind open source was to distribute my experiences as a motion control designer across the globe and help those in need of a motion control block without having to design it themselves. I have grown as a designer and my “product line” has grown with me, but the day still has 24 hours of which I may have 1 or 2 every now and then.

The solution is actually quite simple. Let another entity take over the distribution of the products so that I can employ my limited time designing more!

When my good friends at www.driverdudes.com offered their help, I simply couldn’t refuse. Of course, Driver Dudes can not sell product at cost any longer since they have bills to pay. But the value they bring is the ability to offer not only bare boards but also kits, and fully assembled boards.

They did promise they will keep prices competitive and their efforts to deliver customers with the best product possible will be top notch. Hence, I feel like I am leaving you all in extremely good hands. I hope you support Driver Dudes as well as you supported me.

From my side, I promise more new designs coming, hopefully in a monthly basis. I have no excuses now, so back to work!!!

August 6, 2011: AE-CNCPRO25

OK, first of all my apologies to all of those key CNC players out there, but I just could not keep out of the game. I have been dreaming with designing a complete CNC power stage to integrate with any computer running MACH3 or EMC. Sure, in a way I have already given away all the tools you require to build your own CNC machine. There is the CNCBridge which sends control signals from the PC through a parallel port connection and into the stepper drivers, from which there is almost plenty to choose from. Whether the stepper is small or large, 1.5A or 5A, there is a controller to choose.

But what if we could make this a stand alone board? A board with the parallel port interface and the power stages? No need to wire anything other than the motors, right? Well, allow me to present a very nice solution! It may not go up to 5A, so I will not go ahead and tell you that you can use this motor to mill titanium, but if you have a small to medium sized CNC router, or a plasma cutter (the project I am working at the moment), this board should be more than plenty!

The CNCPRO25 holds up to 4 axis of cutting power. Yes, no need to expand as I find it very hard a small to medium sized CNC router will ever be as complex as a five axis machine. Whatever you need for your DIY project, is canned on the same board. It truly can not get much better than this! Well, I mean... It surely would be nice to can the MACH3 capabilities into the same board and then just load up everything through an USB port, but I guess that is just another project. Baby steps, friends! Baby steps!

Either way, I hope you find the CNCPRO25 to your like. I am going to use the board to control a rather large plasma cutter table, so feel free to check progress on my blog at http://robot.avayanex.com.

July 17, 2011: AE-MonstroStep

I have been designing stepper driver boards for a few years now. A lot of hobbyist across the globe have been benefitting from my bare boards offerings for modules such as the AE-STPR1, AE -STPR8811 and others. These are all great products but there is one little hole (actually, more than two to be exact) I had not serviced with my entire collection of designs. And these are in no particular order:

1. Higher current

and

2. More microstepping resolution

Well, guess what? As it turns out I have such a design! And as it furthers turns out, this design is way old! Well, its enough... Its enough time of me hoarding this secret on my hard disk. It is now time to release this puppy into the wild. But why did I take so long to take this baby out of the closet?  Well, I will not lie about it. From all of my designs, this is definitely the most complex of them all. I only foresee a handful of people wanting to go into it as not only the soldering is more than on other modules, but you also have to program a microcontroller. This last part is not necessarily a show stopper and I surely hope so, because this controller is plainly amazing! Really? How?

Well for starts, depending on which IC you use, either the DRV8828 or the DRV8829, you can drive a stepper with up to 3A or 5A, respectively! 5A? Definitely a new current high, here. This is of course not all of it.

Because the microcontroller is so powerful, I was able to cram up to 512 degrees of microstepping in it. WHAAAAAAT??? 512 degrees of microstepping? That is frigging preposterous! Who would want to use such a humongous resolution? Well, I don’t know. But if you need it, there it is.

You may come to notice that the AE-CNCBridge was designed with this board in mind. Since the MSP430 microcontroller can only take 3.3V, but the PC supplies 5V, we needed some sort of level shifting. None of the DRV88xx devices require this, but the MCU does. Just an FYI in case you were wondering.

Well, nothing else to say other than I hope you find this design entertaining. I will be documenting a good deal of its inner workings on my blog, so feel free to check. If you don’t see it on the blog send me an email so I stop being a lazy fool! It is on your court now ;-)

June 27, 2011: AE-MegaMotor II

The AE-MDL-MegaMotor module has had some fans. I am amazed none of its users has complained as much as some idiot who keeps on pestering me on how this board could be better. And that idiot, happens to be me! Yes, Mega Motor is a cool board, but I have learned quite a bit since its inception well over a year ago, so I decided to re-run it.

The result? Well, obviously a way better board! AE-MDL-MegaMotor II is still capable of interfacing all those wonderful DRV88xx devices from TI. Except the single H Bridge devices. Why? Well, because trying to use the single H Bridge version driver on the dual H Bridge version did not play out well. I think the fact that the two SENSE resistors are separated and not joined (as it should) caused some nasty imbalances. So you will see AE-MDL-MegaMotor II is optimized for the dual H Bridge DRV88xx devices, namely DRV8802/12/13/14/24/25/41/43. Darn it! I would have to say, those are enough!

NOTE: For the single H Bridge version, do not forget to look into the AE-MDL-MegaBridge.

What else do we get with the AE-MDL-MegaMotor II? You still get access to the two H Bridges with numerous interface styles such as PHASE/ENABLE or IN1/IN2 perfect for DC or stepper control, STEP/DIRECTION, perfect for driving bipolar stepper motors.

The back layer still enjoys from a table detailing the different pin configuration. What I did add was a small legend on the top layer silk screen. The idea is not having to be flipping the board every time we want to place a wire. However, space is not too much so all I could squeeze was the stepper version naming convention.

Where you will see the great majority of changes will be on the heat sinking. This time incorporated the top layer surface mount heat sinking as seen on other great boards such as the MegaBridge or STPR8811. I also have two holes which I will use to attach a bottom side heat sink I am developing and will be milled out of aluminum on my home CNC. I expect to get very low thermal impedances which is the name of the game, when it comes to anything driving.

Well my friends, it is time to get busy with a Mega Motor II controller, so check it out HERE:

Do not forget to tune into robot.avayanex.com for more information on how to use these boards!
Have a Question? Feel free to email me or visit our Forum www.robot-talk.com