I have a 15" square robot base with Qty=4 37D-4683 motors (200RPM) and the Dagu thumper wheels (120mm). I’m running from a C# program that I talk to remote IO (currently I have Analog Outs 0-10V-use for speed control (left and right) and TTL 5Vdc, but can also be 24Vdc for direction control (FWD, Reverse and Stop). I’m thinking of getting more low end torque and switching to the 4687 motor (68RPM).
Left side motors are in parallel and right side motors are in parallel.
What motor controller do you recommend that can take an Analog Input along with Direction control (F, R and S)? I bought some Analog to PWM controllers from Amazon and their PWM response time from an Analog Input Change is horrible (on the order of 200msec to 1sec).
If I can update my control system to output a PWM signal, then what motor controller do you recommend (PWM, F, R and S)?
We do not have any motor drivers or controllers that take both a 0-10V analog signal and a separate signal for direction. But our Simple Motor Controller G2 (SMC G2) products can be configured to do speed and direction control with a 0-3.3V analog signal. For the motors you mentioned, at 24V, the SMC G2 24v12 would probably be the most appropriate version. You would need two of them (one for each side of the robot) since they only have a single motor channel. Please note that since your signal is 0-10V, you would either need to limit your signal to 3.3V or use something like a voltage divider to reduce it.
If you update your control system to have a duty-cycle based PWM signal along with a digital high/low signal for direction, then you could consider something like the Dual VNH5019 Motor Driver Shield or one of our High-Power Motor Drivers, such as the Dual G2 High-Power Motor Driver 24v14 Shield, or Both of those particular options are dual motor drivers, so you would only need one of them; however, please note that they do not have as many built-in features as the Simple Motor Controllers, such as speed and acceleration limiting or current limiting.
