I'm planning a Raspberry Pi robot project and was wondering if there was anyone on here that does robots? What's the easiest way to control motors with the Pi? Probably 3-6v and 2A. I'm getting an Arduino Uno for some servo stuff later on but at the moment I want to build a simple 2 wheeled bot. I'm not averse to making circuits either I just don't know where to start.
Pretty please? I found a sweet tamiya gearbox and I will cry if I can't make it work! Sent from my LT18i using Tapatalk 2
Probably what you already know, but you could use a mosfet a transistor or solid state relay. The pi would switch the device of choice and that in turn would switch power to the motor. I believe but am not certain that there are I/O boards that interface to the gpio pins and they might be able to switch the necessary power without further interfacing needed
That works for me, there are straight up switched voltages off the gpio? Just need to find a German maplins now if that's the case. Sent from my LT18i using Tapatalk 2
The gpio switch a low voltage. 3.3 volts I believe. So 0 volts when off 3.3 when on. The power they supply is also very low only a few milliamps which is shared among all the outputs. So one output on its own could supply more power than if all of them were turned on. Hence why you need the interfacing technology. Be that a third party board or something you whip up with a few transistors
Thanks shadow, saw the boards like picoborg and such but delivery would take a while to here and couldn't find anything in Germany. Guess I'll do some project board transistors and see if I can make them work. Not sure about reverse though. Sent from my LT18i using Tapatalk 2
I'd look on the RasPi / Arduino boards as I've been looking into programming attiny85 chips for a little project using the Uno and although not my point of interest, I've seen loads of robot stuff online this last couple days using Pi/Uno
Will do dynamis, raspi board is not working on tapatalk but will check the arduino ones! Sent from my LT18i using Tapatalk 2
There you go that took all of 30 seconds of googling http://www.robotroom.com/BipolarHBridge.html If you can work out your requirements to get one transistor interface working (and make the motor turn in one direction) you should be able to work out what you need to get the above circuit up and running.
Thanks again shadow, I don't usually have this much trouble working things out! Sent from my LT18i using Tapatalk 2
You might also want to look at the Gertboard: it's actually more expensive than a Pi, but offers loads of I/O, including some motor specific stuff: http://www.element14.com/community/docs/DOC-51726/l/assembled-gertboard-for-raspberry-pi It can be connected directly to the top of an RPi and comes with a manaul full of examples (I've got one but not used it yet, but there's plenty of stuff on the Internet using it). It does however need an additional power supply for the motors (up to 18V). Might not be quite what you're looking for though as it does offer way more than you'll need, but you could always look at the schematics and just replicated the parts you need.
Will look into that for the future if I find I need more stuff but I'm trying this out on a budget at the moment, lol. Hopefully will be ordering my pi tomorrow, I'm just smacking my head against the wall at the moment trying out ubuntu on my laptop, I can't even get the touch screen right or install a single driver!! Lol
