Hi,
want to make small airship. It needs to be operated(controled) from PC. I’d like to ask about the setup to be sure I will buy the correct parts. Not sure after hours in this forum how to choose correctly and any advices will be appreciated.
What I want to control: speed for each engine(both directions!), servo(need 180 degrees span, I red it should be no problem even if normal servos has only 90 degrees span, want to use servo so I will not need to think about position feedback)
Definitely I will need two Wixels. Then some maestro servo controller for the servo. And then I’m lost. Lets say it will be two small DC engines do I need motor driver or controller. The driver or motor contoller will be connected to the maestro controller?
It is important which engine I will use? Using or not using brushless engines will change the set-up?
Sorry for this newbie question, but don’t want to wait fortnight for the items and than found out that I need something different.
Thanks for your time and eventual answers or link to some usefull articles.
Brushless DC motors tend to be more expensive, more reliable and more difficult to control than brushed motors. It seems that hobby aviation projects tend to use brushless motors. Our DC motor controllers and drivers are only for brushed motors.
Note that you might not need a Maestro. The Wixel has a servo library and you might be able to get a servo that responds to 3.3V signals, or shift the voltage.
I am not following your description of servo angles. I don’t think it is safe to assume that you can push any random normal servo to 180 degrees.
Thanks for answer,
ok lets assume I will use the brushed motors. It’s great that I can use the wixel as servo controler(spare some weight), but some more question.
1)How will I control the motors from wixel??? Let say “Dual MC33926 Motor Driver Carrier” will be my choice, what am I missing is how will it work with Wixel? Looks like Wixel is still missing “wireless motor driver interfaces” that are planned for future.
2)I don’t need to use servo and try to torture it to -90,+90 but don’t see any other possibility. Maybe I can use the smallest stepper motor, but again not sure how to connect with Wixel(other servo controller).
I’m trying to read all resources I can, yet I’m still newbie and I don’t get the big picture:-/
If you used the MC33926, you would have to get the Wixel to generate logic signals to drive the motors. If you want variable speed, you would have to learn about the Wixel timer registers to generate PWM signals. If you don’t want to deal with this low-level interface, you could try one of our motor controllers, like the Qik 2s9v1 Dual Serial Motor Controller. With this product, you would use one of the Wixel’s UARTs to communicate serially with the controller.
One thing is not still clear to me I will connect motor controller like this pololu.com/docs/0J46/5.b, this is I hope clear. But if I want to control the servo via wixel I will need to create my own version of wixel wireless app that is incorporating the servo.lib. Do I get it right???
Why do wixel have two UARTs? You can use them to communicate with two controlers??
Correct. To control a serial device remotely, you can use the standard wireless serial app, but if you also wanted it to control a servo, you would need to modify the wireless serial app. The Wixel does have two UARTs: USART0 and USART1. It should be possible to use them both to control two controllers (with the proper app), or to use one with controllers that can be daisy-chained.
