First of all i would like to mention that my knowledge in electronics is quite limited
I’m building a pan & tilt head and need to control 2 dc motors and looking for the correct controller-equipment to do so. I’m a bit confused between the different pololu controllers and need to make sure that i get the correct parts for my project.
The basic idea would be to be able to control 2 motors using one joystick (an option to add an RC receiver would be great) for both . Moving up/down to controll the vertical movement and right/left the horizontal one.
Can i do this by using one controller or do i need to combine 2 controllers?
The motors will be 12 v (brushed gear motors)
Due to lack of any programming skills i need this to work without having to attach it to an arduino .
If you do not already have the brushed DC motors, and you want to control pan and tilt with a hobby RC transmitter/receiver, you should consider using hobby RC servos since they are designed to be directly controlled with the an RC transmitter/receiver pair and have position control built in. Also, there are a variety of pan and tilt servo kits you can find online.
Achieving that level of control is a little more complex if you already have the brushed DC motors, since you would need to add and process some kind of feedback to be able to control the position of your pan and tilt system. For that, you might use one of our jrk motor controllers, which are able to use feedback, with something like a potentiometer. Each jrk controls a single motor, so you would need two of them (and two potentiometers) to do pan and tilt.
Actually I’m not familiar with servo motors this is why i consider dc gear motors.
Would this controller work for my project :https://www.pololu.com/product/1373 ? As far as i could understand i could combine 2 controllers one for each motor so i can control each motor one for the horizontal move and one for the vertical but how can i combine both under one joystick so i can control both through one joystick? Do i need feedback in order to get these to work?
Like I mentioned in my last reply, if you want to achieve control of a pan-tilt mechanism with something like a dual-axis joystick on a hobby RC transmitter, it is more reasonable to use RC servos because the feedback system (e.g. a potentiometer, control board, etc.) is already built-in. (The whole hobby RC control system was built for control of this kind.) So, unless you think your application has specific needs that require that you custom-build your own version of a servo so that you have some unique kind of control over your application, it seems unnecessary to rebuild your feedback system using our parts. This video should highlight how simple and straightforward it is to control a servo with a hobby RC transmitter.
As far as your question about the Simple Motor Controller, no, the jrk motor controllers I mentioned in my last reply can incorporate feedback; the Simple Motor Controllers cannot.
