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Asked — Edited

Commotion Motor Driver / Mecanum Wheels

I've been having a look at the ComMotion motor driver as an option to drive two motors much like a Sabertooth. With the onboard encoder counting, it should be possible to create something via serial or i2c that acts like a Kangaroo.

My thought is that I could later get two more motors and some omni/mecanum wheels in the future for another platform - or go right for the mecanums now.

Has anyone else made use of the ComMotion? I'd be interested in your feedback (and potentially code!)

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#1  

You'll probably have to reverse engineer the arduino code on sparkfun's website. make the calls via ARC i2c.

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#2  

Thanks for your reply.

I was thinking of getting an Arduino as a second processor or using it to reprogram the board's firmware (it hints mentions this is possible in the documentation) to work with a two motor differential setup, but am now thinking that is a lot of fuss.

Part of the reason I got back into making a robot was to make use of some of the old parts I've been keeping around, so I'll stick to my original idea with my old castor wheel and go for a Sabertooth 12amp with a Kangaroo. The ComMotion only goes up to 2.5amp per motor (mine are only 450mA), so the Sabertooth gives me plenty of room to bulk up.

#3  

Seems like an approach that will bring faster benefits. Mercanum wheels seem awesome but without spline based motion planning it seems that the mercanum part might not be fully realized.

I haven't translated Arduino i2c to ARC but I suspect it's several hours to get the expected results. I have used Arduino interfaced with EZ robot via Serial and for greater then 500 milliseconds communication times it is very do-able. A couple of members have mentioned issues with the more advanced aspects of serial communication but I have not experienced those issues. Don't design yourself into a box with serial communication.

Hopefully in a month or two I am going to be exploring sabertooth kangaroo plug-in functionality.