JrK 21v3

Hello All!!

I have been reading through the posts here and I must say what a community!!! I am a noob to robotics and to this site/forum…so if I speak out of school I apologize…

OK I have purchased a couple JrK 21v3 boards and built an analog positional motor driver with feedback and it works great its a great little board with I assume a lot of features…so now to my question’s::

is it possible to have the Jrk somehow find the mechanical end stops of the motor that is say mounted and geared (with potentiometer feedback) to a barrel but has mechanical stops…I’m wondering if there is something I could build or its built in already?? That if I press a button and the motor will energize and creep in one direction and when it finds the mechanical stop it will stop and set the limit and proceed in the other direction and find the mechanical end stop and set that limit? I would then be able to move this barrel with the analog potentiometer without have to worry about the end stops?

Any help or pointing me in the right direction would be appreciated thanks!!

Hello.

Thanks for the kind words about our jrk; we are glad that you like it.

The jrk motor controller needs an input to command the motor, so to get the jrk to go through a preprogrammed sequence of commands, the jrk would need to receive those commands from something like a microcontroller.

Since you are using feedback, you can set limits using the Jrk Configuration Utility. The limits can be set using the learn feature or set manually in the utility. You can find more information about this in the “Feedback Options” section of the jrk user’s guide.

- Grant

Hi Grant thanks for that info…I have read that and know how to set the limits that way…but the way I am using this board…can’t set manually nor can I connect to use all the time…what micro controller should I use and where can I start as far as the programming required for such commands?? Again new here and would like to be to read and learn!!!

The Arduinos (or our A-Star programmable controllers) are a good place to start for people who are new to microcontrollers. There are a lot of resources for those boards to help with getting started.

What prevents you from using the limit feature on the jrk motor controller?

- Grant

Grant- I am using the board to drive a motor with a potentiometer feedback for position… Controlling from another pot…the motor is ganged to the feedback pot by way of gears and the jrk is in an enclosure so no access to USB and even if I had access hard to turn feedback pot to have the jrk learn the limit.

I hope I explained that right…

So what I would like to do is have a push button learn as these motors that I am using will drive different things but with different mechanical stops…I’m using these on lenses to focus and the lenses change and have different limit stops

So where do I need to start looking about the micro controllers?

It is going to be hard to use a microcontroller if you cannot access your jrk motor controller. The microcontroller would need to connect to the jrk to command it. Also, if you still want analog control, you will need to disconnect the input potentiometer from the jrk and connect it to the microcontroller. I recommend looking at the tutorials on the Arduino website as a place to get get started.

It will probably be a easier to set the limit in the jrk configuration utility. You would only need to set the limits once (the jrk would remember the limits even if it lost power) and the configuration utility lets you send commands to the jrk so you would not have to turn it by hand.

- Grant