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Asked — Edited

Sabertooth 2X60

Hello all. I am new to EZ-B. I am trying to set up a tank drive using a sabertooth 2x60 as my motor controller. I cannot figure out what configuration i need to control the motors. I have tried the serial connection in the tutorial but it will only control motor one and in only the forward direction. i have tried it in R/C mode with switch 1-off, 2-on, 3-on, 4-off, 5-on, and 6-off. using that configuration both motors start moving the second i apply power to the motor control board but i am not sending any commands to the ez-b. What other configurations can i try? i have spent the last 4 hours surfing the community and have found nothing that has worked for me. i also tried the configuration in the sabertooth manual where switch 1-off and 6-off but here as soon as i apply power motor one powers and starts moving without me giving it any commands from the EZ-B. any assistance would be very helpful. Thank you.


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Synthiam
#1  
Every control has a ? mark next to the X. Add the Sabertooth motor driver and press the ?

It will direct you to the sabertooh help page. You will need to read your datasheet to find the correct settings for the sabertooth to EZ-B.:)
#2  
thank you DJ. I connected the EZ-B as described in the help tool; Using port D0 connected to GRND to 0V, +5 to +5, and the signal on the EZ-B to S1. I am only getting control of one motor (M1 port on sabertooth) and that is in the Forward only direction. There are many different configurations on the data sheet from Sabertooth. I have tried all of them and they only will give me control of one motor (M1 port) in the forward direction no matter which direction i put in ARC. to me the data sheet is all over the place. is there a specific serial selection i need to use to control the sabertooth with EZ-B?


the data sheet im looking at is here http://www.dimensionengineering.com/datasheets/Sabertooth2x60.pdf

*confused*
#3  
in playing with the dip switch when 1-on 2-on 3-off 4-off 5-0ff 6-on (standard serial mode just with switch 2 on) both motors did power on when power was applied to the motor control board. I could not control the motors through ez-b. but that helps me confirm that M2 port on the motor controller is working.
PRO
Synthiam
#4  
Set the switches for Standard Simplified Serial and 38400 Baud.
#5  
using that configuration i only have control over the motor plugged into the M1 port on the sabertooth and can only go in the forward direction. should i be able to change the settings on the sabertooth serial control in ARC? I can only change the settings on "left forward" value from 1 to 127. all the other settings are set to 1 and cannot be changed.
#6  
DJ wanted to let you know that we were able to get full control of both motors by manipulating a text file of the saved program from ARC we created. John from Dimension Engineering helped me with the values we needed to get it working. also on the other hand when i got home from school tonight i noticed there was an update that was made to the sabertooth controller in ARC that had those values pre entered on the sabertooth control and it is working 100% using the updated version as well. Thank you DJ!
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Synthiam
#7  
@kayla sorry about that. It seems the Sabertooth controller was not allowing any other value than 1 in the config. It was indeed updated in the latest release:)
#8  
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Here is how the tank is looking.

I found a transistor switch in the community boards. I would like to use it to fire the airsoft cannons we are putting on the tank. Any thing special i need to be careful of with using the PWM ports?
Canada
#9  
Welcome @kayla05

That looks like a home made tank chassis? I am eager to see more details if you don't mind.

We are an inquisitive bunch here, and love pictures and videos:)
#10  
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Yes we are building a tank for a capstone project. Presentation is tomorrow night. lol.. We still have much more work to do on it. Still need to get the rest of the body built and painted. Also need to figure out a way to construct a circuit to control the firing of the dual turrets we made. The tread is home made using bicycle chain and aluminum shelving. The drive system uses 2 9.6v ryobi drill motors with the gears from the drill. We did realize that the motors have alot of torque so we modified the program to slow it down some. It was a costly mistake running them at full speed as we lost one of the motors. lol.
#11  
Videos will come. There is another group in the class building a tank as well but so far what we have seen there tank completed for the most part. We will be running it over.. lol.. We will try to get some video of them battleing it out during the demonstration part after we present.
Canada
#12  
That is really impressive!

I hope your presentation goes well... nothing like a little time crunch to bring out the ingenuity:D

At least with EZ-Robot, you can make your hardware dance rather quickly without debugging lines and lines of code... well... not too many that is:P Still, it is the easiest way to get started.

Looking forward to the video!
#13  
Hi, I would like to add one addition to this thread. The photo showing switch positions for the Sabertooth for simplified serial show switch position 3 in the down position. This means you have lithium batteries. If you are using a power supply with a lead acid battery for protection against motor voltage regeneration, as the dimension engineering site suggest, put switch 3 up.:)
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