I saw a similar question had been posted, but is there a way to get it to listen to RC, and if that’s not present, listen to serial? (besides using the Arduino to talk to the radio, which makes it complicated). I can see where it’d be confusing if both were present, but I’d like to be able to control it by human (eg: RC), but when a person can’t be present, through an automated loop.
Seems like a simple thing to make the motor controller capable of. Probably isn’t too hard through the arduino, but eats up lines to listen to an RC channel for just that.
Our Simple Motor Controllers do not have that kind of functionality built-in. As you mentioned, you can do this using a separate microcontroller, such as an Arduino. However, you should not need to tie up any extra lines on the Arduino do this. You could connect the RC signal to the Simple Motor Controller and use serial commands from the Arduino to read the pulse width. You can do this using the “Get Variable” command. More information about this command can be found in the “ASCII Command Reference” section of the Simple Motor Controller user’s guide. Please note that information about the variables that can be used with this command (including RC channel inputs) is available in the “Controller Variables” section of the guide, which directly follows the section I linked above.
By the way, your astromech looks great! Did you use anything else from Pololu in your L3-G0 robot?
So you’re saying set it up to be controlled by serial, but connect the RC channel anyway. Then use the Arduino to ask the motor controller for the RC values, and use that result to tell the motor controller to move the motor?
I didn’t realize you could do that, seems like that could address my issue. (I’ve been doing so many things with L3-G0 I confess to not having read the manuals thoroughly
Yes, I bought some Arduino related stuff, motor controllers, mp3 trigger (ack why’s the output ground so funky), and voltage regulators. It’s helped a lot.
Thank you for telling us what parts you used. Your understanding sounds correct; you can have the Simple Motor Controller respond to serial commands and still connect the RC signal to it. Then, you can use the Arduino to receive the RC signal readings from the Simple Motor Controller using serial commands.
