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