K8055 - Dual Wiper Motor Control with Variable Speed

Hello Tim (and Adam) 1 hour ago i definetly gave up my project with Thanos h-bridge. Reading thru your post here has given me some motivation to not give up my sim. I have a working AMC (Thanos) vipermotors and a Deriy-style seat ready for motion. Maybe your setup can rescue all this from the junkyard. my other alternative would be polulu, but i guess i am not a good friend of mosfet drivers, or my home enviroment is to static loaded

Anyhow, here is my questions: Frakk wrote that this setup can be used with Thanos amc. Does that exlude the k8055, or is it together with this board?

If i go for this I hope you would offer a little bit of assistance, as i am realy a rookie to elektronics. I am not alone about that on this forum and this seems to be a good solution for people like me?

Would the clikking from the relays be anoying over time. is it posible to put them into a boks to reduce sound?

Do you think this system will be responsive enough for racing sim?

ps: My accent is norwegian 8)

Fred

Hi Fred

In answer to your question about clicking, and whether the solution is responsive enough, I post my latest prototype slider test:
(Please ignore the apparent dropout at 0:17... I dropped the slider with my trackpad! : )

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=if0nzgkNcgk

Remember please that the wiper motor is underpowered and so is a little slower than it could be (for test I use a PC power supply) and that the actuator has no suspension at the moment which will assist the motion. (could be bungee... could be spring... )

I believe that the solution is getting there! (And the clicking isn't really that bad... just turn the game volume up and you wont hear it!)
I have made some good progress in the last few days with the actuator and profile, so maybe it could become a viable entry level sim.

I think that Frakk was meaning that the Relay solution could be used in place of Thanos' H-bridge and that it could be used alongside the AMC or the K8055 (in other words, it should work with either).

I am a rookie with electronics as well - the PCB for the single relay shown in the 2nd video in this thread was the first PCB I had ever designed, or etched! (Don't let a little thing like inexperience get in the way... ...just do your research well and learn from setbacks!)

Tim 8)

PS. I don't like static sensitive components either - I have never had any luck with mosfets... hence the super simple build!

Thanks Tim. If i can use relays with amc without the k8055 i would be very happy and order some parts pronto! maybe Frakk or Thanos can comment on that and explain how to connect it

Fred

Fred: It would be a shame if you gave up, and I see it was just a momentary disappointment. :

The AMC motor connector has 6 control pins + 2power. You need a PWM and only one direction pin for one relay circuit, x2 for the 2 axis.


Tim: On the spring calculations you might be right, a softer spring with more preload will work better. After all, the bungee cords are the same way too...

The pictures say it all:





15 minutes playing with the geometry I could arrive at a very reasonable solution, even with the very limited spring travel. The black servo arm is free to rotate in case of runaway. I could not take a picture at 50% because the spring just kicked it out.

I think this proves my concept. GREAT SUCCESS! :

Superb - thats different to both of our initial concepts too! :clap:

(for anyone who hasn't been following this thread: In both of the original designs, the spring connected to the same central axle as the discs - in the lego pictures they would have connected to the axle of the grey cog)

Many thanks Frakk - I will have this made just as soon as I can get some springs!
With the spring so close to the hinge, overloading the wiper motor shouldn't be too much of an issue...

I really should get in touch with my folks and ask them to ship my lego over - its been far too long!! :lol:

Tim :

Ok. Must spend some time reading and understanding this option, but i guess it means i dont need k8055, and that its posible to use the amc!

Tim: far so long being in touch, or far so long building lego? I am lucky to have two kids with loads of it, and this christmas an NXT ;D (always good to have a reason to keep in touch...)
Regards Fred

:lol: a bit of both I guess!

I have 2 lads myself, but mine are a wee bit young yet for lego technics... never mind that though - I'll be happy playing with it myself until they get up a bit! :rofl:

Tim

i dont find the menue with the Sliders for testing.
is it in the Profiler?

Hi Menix

Open the Force sender, and click on Choose official developer plugin

That will produce the list as in the picture below...

...selecting TestPlugin in this list will open the TestTablet window :thbup:



Remember to click on the Try Send Data button in force sender, or the signals from the sliders will not be available in Force Profiler

Tim

LEGO never gets old, now I regret giving most of it away years ago. I wish the NXT stuff was around when I was younger.

Isnt that the truth!! I couldn't believe it when that stuff first appeared

The youth of today has is so easy... that said, us old guys can afford all the really cool stuff without having to wait until birthdays or christmas!!


Heres a quote and a question from a really old thread...

I have been looking for some time now to discover how this is done - which registry key do I need to change?

The picture below shows the ones available to me - am I in the right area?



Tim

A gas spring for lifting hatchbacks would work very well here. Suspa makes a 9 (fully extended) unit that has a force of 30-100lbs.

Tim, thanks for posting this thread, it has been inspirational. I am working on the design for a 3DOF simpit (both racing and flight), I first found Roland's website and then this one which led me to your thread here. Excellent information.

Trying to learn about this solution: The relays only controll the direction and the transistor or a mosfet controll speed?. So from the k8055 (or amc) you have two signals one for direction and one for speed? What is the advantage and disadvantage using mosfet and other types of transistor? (have some logic channel mosfets left from my h-bridge) Is it posible to make a dummies-diagram of all the connections between battery, relays transistor controller etc? or should I take responsibility and study more? I guess I can use some of the diodes from dsmhb? Trying to get ready for some ordering because its at least 3 veeks to get parts to where I live!

Have you tested with load?

Historiker... Sounds norwegian!?

Fred

Fred: Historiker is Deutsch for Historian, I have a degrees in History, Museum Studies, and Political Science and I studied Deutsch. Unfortunatly the language was a minor field of study and I am not very fluent in it. I am in the U.S.

The Pololu boards look pretty good to use with the K8055 so I think I will go that route with 24v wheelchair motors. It is more plug and play (as you can see above, my education is in the humanities, not electronics )

Historiker is also historian in Norwegian! Are you shure polulu is plug and play? One reason I am thinking of using Tim`s way of doing it, is that I am not really shure that polulu is the best solution for us with the humanities education!

Exactly. If you look at the circuit diagram you can clearly see this, PWM connects to pass transistor, Direction connects to the relay. I posted a simple schematic with a MOSFET as a pass transistor, but that is without specific parts, only to give a direction for those who want to experiment. MOSFETs are more efficient and have better switching characteristics than BJT's.

The Pololu motor drivers have the same inputs as this relay driver, or the dMSHB. They will be the most plug-n-play out of the 3, since there is no soldering involved.
Technically you can use any combination of the 3 drivers, with the 2 control boards (K8055 and AMC) after making sure the direction signals are good. The relay needs only 1 direction input (1/0), but dMSHB needs 2 (01/10) for example.

It is not as simple as I made out, but the wiring diagram provided on Vellemen's site is pretty simple:
http://forum.velleman.eu/viewtopic.php? ... a&start=15

Notice that Tim is involved in that thread also

I can purchase three Pololu boards for around 130.00 and two K8055 boards for around 100.00 (locally) so I am eagerly awaiting Tim's research on setting up three of them in X-Sim2.

My biggest worry if I am going for polulu is to overheat them or destroy the mosfets on them. Have to think about ordering relays or polulu-drivers... Guess we are out of topic, but it is also useful to point out resons for choosing between relays or mosfet drivers with k8055 (or amc)

fred

Absolutely - Where better to go for advice than the manufacturer themselves!!

VEL225 is very helpful and extremely knowledgable. I found the paledin solution (basic relay circuit as linked in the first post in this thread) in a different thread. The design of the PCB was mine, but as I have always said I can claim no originality for the initial circuit design!

I don't know if you saw this one - heres a link to the first thread where I described the K8055 relay setup - there is a H-bridge circuit using transistors in there as well... less efficient, but it does work.
http://www.x-simulator.de/forum/velleman-k8055-wipe-motoren-t2770.html

Fred - if you follow the thread back from the start, you should have all the connection information you need... a big picture would be overkill - in each of the diagrams, I have labeled the connections using the same terms and names as you will find on the board...

Let me know if you get stuck, but it should be easy enough

Tim

Hi Historiker

I am not intending to use Pololu boards - I will be sticking with the Relay solution for my experimenting for now
The outcome should be very similar as a solution, but I have no experience of using these boards...

...and until I am sure of my control solution, I will not be experimenting with any expensive or static sensitive components!

I am working towards a solution using multiple K8055s though, which would be relevant to driving 3 Pololu boards.

Menix found a circuit diagram on the Velleman forum which could be very useful to you, but I have no idea if it works:



EDIT:
I just checked out the thread in the Velleman forum myself, and as usual VEL255 has offered some other useful advice:

Like I said before - VEL255 is a genuinely knowledgable and helpful person

Good luck!

Tim