Mulberry
USA
Asked
— Edited
Resolved by Steve G!
Afternoon All
Can anyone confirm the H Bridges in the tutorials are still not suitable for 12 volt motors even with the new EZ boards? I want to avoid the headache of using a Pololu H bridge. The wiring and configuration are a nightmare 
This is for a simple waist rotation, not high speed.
Thanks,
Daniel
No problem. If you Google the motor you have, you might find a spec sheet telling you the current draw. That will give you an idea of what motor controller you can use.
These motors pull a ton of amps at start up and throw current back into the controller when reversed. When I first started trying to control them I burnt up two of the H-bridges sold here in the EZ Robot store. They are nice h-bridges but wont handle the flyback current produced by this motor when it reverses. Last time we spoke I mentioned this issue and is why I recommended the Pololu h-bridge as it's much better and natively protected from this electrical phenomenon. Your going to keep burning up controllers unless you use one that is good at protecting it's self from over voltage and reverse voltage. *eek*
EDIT: I just reread your last few posts. Are the H-Bridges you burnt up the Pololu I recommended? I have used them with this motor with no issues. I can help you with the connections and would also be willing to solder the needed parts to it if you want the help.
Daniel
Thanks,
Daniel
Believe it or not the damn thing's working. The port configuration makes no sense to me but I don't care. I've taken photographs, drawn a circuit diagram, and made every conceivable steps I could to record the connections.
Man we're talking weeks here.........
Thanks to everyone who gave advice. I'm now going to start drinking.
Daniel
That's great news. So glad you got it finally working the way you want. Enjoy the drink, you deserve it.
In know you have it working now but just to run through the connections:
In a typical application:
**The motor power supply is connected at the bottom of the board (where is says + - Motor Supply). in your case 12vdc.
**The motor it's self is attached to the right side of the board (where it says Out A and Out B). On a typical DC motor it would not matter which lead goes to A or B. You can swap these if you want the motor to go the other way.
**The control connections go to the left side of the board. You would want to attach one signal pin of an EZB Digital port to the PWM pin, The Black Ground pin of EZB's Digital port to GND. Now you need to be careful on the next connection. This motor control board requires 5vdc be delivered to the 5+ pin. The center power pin of any digital port on EZB will deliver what ever voltage your powering EZB at. If your feeding 12 vdc to power EZB then you have 12vdc at the center pin of any digital port. If your attaching this feed through 12vdc to the little Pololu board at the 5+ pin it sill shut down or burn up. You need to step down the voltage or use an alternate power source to get a stable 5vdc feeding the 5+ pin on the left side of the Pololu motor controller.
**You will also need two more wires attached to INa and INb. These would in turn attach to two different signal pins on EZB's digital ports. These will turn on when you call for them and set the direction of the motor.
So on EZB you'll have:
3 wires connected to the digital signal ports
1 wire to the ground of a digital port
1 one to the center power pin of a digital port that must be regulated to 5vdc
**Now in ARC you would have to make sure you set the PWM port to te wire that is attached to the PWM of the Pololu and move ot up over 40 by either using the PWM control or in a script.
**Only then can you turn on or off the Digital port (one at a time) either in a script or a control that either attaches to INa or INb and the motor will turn the way you want or stop.
Hope this helps.
Chears and bottom s up! I'll hava a rum and coke.
Daniel
All port settings are the same, I get a clean connection to the board, read power going in via my test meter but yet no responses.
Now I understand you're only allowed 1 H-bridge per project so I created multiple projects, each with their own H-bridge, however I used the same EZ. Perhaps the problem is I can only use a single bridge per EZ itself. Not a big issue because I have several.
Anyone care to chime in?
Thanks,
Daniel
Just to correct you, you can in fact use 2 H-Bridge's on a single project. It's only one Movement Panel your allowed to have. This would mean that a Movement Panel would control one H-Bridge, while you would have to script the other one. Or you could script both and use a custom movement panel. Using two h-Bridges is not done to often as it uses up more ports, and to set up two H-Bridges in ARC is a little bit more complex than adding the H-Bridge movement panel, but it can be done with a little extra work.
Don't know why your h-bridges are not responding. When strange things like this happen to me I shut down the robot and EZB, reboot the computer and restart ARC, the robot and EZB. Also check to see the H-Bridges are getting power and the connections are tight.
BTW Dave. You have 3 running you said. I'm assuming you connect to all 3 at the same time and just have multiple project windows. Have you encountered any issues?
Thanks,
Daniel
No problem. When you get around to it, scripting the H-Bridge motor controllers won't be too difficault. I mentioned that you can only use one Movement Panel per project to control one motor controller, but with scripts you can use a custom Movement Panel to control two H-Bridge motor controllers (which of course would depend on how you wish to use them in a project).
A few months back now, I asked about using multiple motor controllers in one project and got some great advice. Have a look here as you may find it useful.
Daniel
No problem. Did you get everything sorted in the end, and if so, what did you end up doing about the motor controllers?
Best,
Bill
Until I learn to write script I'll use multiple EZs and just not activate a few functions. I need to get this build out of the garage :-)
Daniel