Need help finding control board

Robotics and electronics discussion Miscellaneous
1

I am trying to build an ROV. I have searched for several hours on the internet but have not been able to find a controller board that meets my needs. Since I am new to all of this I thought I would look for some help. I need a control board that does the following:

  • RS232 interface to connect to controlling computer (allow for long cable length for ROV tether)
  • min. 8 analog inputs (to connect sensors sending info back to surface)
  • min. 6 digital i/o channels to control relays (turn on/off lights, camera, etc - video feed will be seperate system)
  • min. 6 PWM channels (need to control 3 thruster motors in both directions) if the board has built in motor controls it would be preferrred otherwise I’ll use 6 seperate motor controlers but they will still need the PWM signals from the controller board.

Any and all advice is appreciated. Thanks!

Baobab

2

Hello.

Have you considered the Orangutan X2 robot controller? It has 18 available I/O pins, 8 of which can be used as analog inputs, and 11 more pins can be accessed if you don’t use the LCD. The user I/O lines include five of the MCU’s six hardware PWM outputs, and the board has an integrated dual motor driver that can deliver 14 A continuous (30 A peak) per motor channel.

The X2 does not have an RS-232 serial port, but it does have a built-in USB-to-serial adapter (that doubles as a programmer for the user MCU), which means you can connect it to a computer with a USB cable and have the device show up as a virtual COM port. Alternatively, you could use a TTL-to-RS-232 adapter to connect a computer to the MCU’s TTL serial port.

- Ben