I have a couple quick questions that shouldn't be too difficult for someone.
Background: I'm trying to make a double inverted pendulum for a senior project (electrical engineering). I'm still in the design phase, but I want to make sure I know what to get before I got out and buy tons of parts. Basically, I need to construct something like this:
http://hackaday.com/2010/11/27/balancing-inverted-pendulums/I have yet to decide whether I want to make the base's actuator along a rail, or put the double pendulum on a car, and just have the car zoom forward and backward. Regardless, I need a very strong actuator with reasonable speed and high torque.
So far, the best thing I've found as far as actuators go is an RC car hobby grade motor and ESC:
http://www3.towerhobbies.com/cgi-bin/wti0001p?&I=LXMUN9&P=0and
http://www3.towerhobbies.com/cgi-bin/wti0001p?&I=LXAXT8&P=MI have an arduino mega 2560 that I'm planning on using as the DSP controller. It has an onboard ADC, and outputs PWM which I was hoping to use to control the actuator.
At this point, I have one major question and a couple small ones.
Major Question: Is there an ESC for a motor of this power type that has equal quality forward AND reverse control? (these esc's are for RC cars...they only need to go reverse at a fraction of the speed they need to go forward. This would be non-ideal for double pendulum control.)
Smaller Question 1) What type of input signals do ESC’s need? I have a PWM signal available from the Arduino. Would this work?
Smaller Question 2) If there is no such actuator system that is both reversible and controllable via PWM, what am I to do to implement this system given that I want to keep costs down?
Thank you so much for your time and words of wisdom!!!!!