Society of Robots - Robot Forum

Electronics => Electronics => Topic started by: importfanatik on December 30, 2013, 11:38:51 PM

Title: 12v linear actuator basics
Post by: importfanatik on December 30, 2013, 11:38:51 PM

Hi!

I am an experienced programmer but fairly new to electronics.
I would like to be able to manipulate a 12v linear actuator at varying speeds via MSRDS.
Could anyone recommend a board that would be suitable for this task?

Thanks!

Title: Re: 12v linear actuator basics
Post by: jwatte on December 31, 2013, 12:02:41 AM

Any h-bridge that can be driven with PWM should be suitable, assuming the voltage and amp rating is appropriate. You're not saying how many amps the linear actuator will draw. If it's a small amount (1-1.5 amps) then an Arduino board with a "motor shield" will probably work okay.

The other question is how to integrate it with MSRDS. That's an end-of-life product, so it's hard to find drivers or adapters for anything you can buy on the market today, but if MSRDS can write to a serial port, it should be able to write to an Arduino board.

If you need a higher-power motor controller than a "motor shield" then a Sabretooth controller, or a Pololu high-power motor controller, could work, and can still be controlled from an Arduino (which should in turn be controllable as a serial device from a PC.)

Title: Re: 12v linear actuator basics
Post by: importfanatik on December 31, 2013, 08:32:25 AM

Thanks!

If MSRDS is at end of life, what is the best robotics framework/library to learn going forward?

Title: Re: 12v linear actuator basics
Post by: Kohanbash on December 31, 2013, 03:59:29 PM

Hi
the big open framework that people are using now is ROS http://www.ros.org/ (http://www.ros.org/)

What is your base platform? For example if you are running this from a computer there are motor drivers that can connect via serial to control the motor.