Tutorial SMC3 Arduino 3DOF Motor Driver and Windows Utilities

Hello All,

I am new to the motion sim scene and my first motion sim just arrived. (A Dynamic Kit Pro) I am in the debugging phase right now and am trying to get it working with my system. I had it running and was testing it in the Output Tester and it seemed to work great. Then I goofed up and moved the cursor past the edge of the window while testing which made the scroll bar snap back to the middle. The motor then got stuck at it's maximum position and won't move from there. I then used the tester more to try and find out what had happened and I managed to lock the other motor up. I restarted Simtools and that fixed one of the motors but not the other. In trying to fix this myself I managed to lock the first motor back up. This time in the minimum position. Now they are both stuck and I can't seem to unstick them. Here's a picture of the final position.

The kit uses an Arduino Uno with two H bridges and two electric worm gear motors. The Arduino currently has the SMC3 firmware loaded onto it. I used this because that is what the kit maker recommended. The firmware is in mode 2. I used the SMC3 Utility and followed the initial setup steps to initially make the motors behave.

After this point I have tried in various combination restarting SimTools, restarting the computer, cycling power to the board, cycling power to the motors, reinstalling the Arduino firmware, and messing around with the SMC3 tool. The only fix I have thought of but haven't tried is just applying power directly to a motor to move it away from the max, but that sounds like an excellent way to break the motor or the potentiometer, so I would rather not have to do that.

My suspicion is that this is some sort of limit issue with the potentiometers where the snap from Max to neutral tripped a safety feature. Do any of you have any idea on how to fix this?

@gcheydle did they include simtools or recommend that also?

check the top left of smc3utils. there is a motor off/on button. shut down smc3 before starting simtools

Ok here what I tried I done as you said and re uploaded sketch and then just pot and smc3 I actually tred with two different arduino's I also downloaded sm3 utlity version 0.60 and tried it I can still only adjust pwm min and pwmrev
I thought about mabey trying on another Pc

Looking more closely at your earlier screenshot, I think the issue is actually your system seems to be using a larger font than normal and the numbers have wrapped to the next line and are being covered by the next line of text. I don't know why this is - it's the first time I have seen it. I suspect it is actually working and changing the values on the arduino you just can't see it happen.

Do you have windows setup to use non standard fonts or extra large font?

@gcheydle do as @bruce stephen suggests, but make sure the motor pots are moved to the center position before restarting or it may just immediately disable the motors again. This shutdown function is built in to protect the motors and rig if something goes wrong.

it's crazy cause my windows was set to default font but I tried small like you said and that was it now I can see adjustments everything is working perfectly now thanks for everyones help now I can move forward with project thanks again

Hello!
I followed the tutorial and set up SMC3 in arduino for the H-Bridge (setting MODE2 inside the code) but i am not able to start the motor! I just connect one motor to test via SMC3 windows tool.
I have the setup attached. The circuit image is also attached and is the upside of the example. What is going wrong?

Motor is "OFF", see left corner on the top...must be "ON"

Thanks for ur reply!
I turned on the motor and repeated the set up procedure.
But getting same result : no motor running (
I attached the new Utility setup. Remarke: the "Max Limits" must no be upper than 65 if not the Motor 1 "ON" buttpn in the left corner on the top, go OFF.

There is something wrong with the potentiometer or the wiring to the potentiometer

If i twitch the potentiometer, the Feedback variates as the attachment shows.
Im using arduino mega 2560 tho, it should be not problems with the code right? The data of the potentiometer is conected to the arduino in A0 analog input. Then i have a protoboard to the put the circuit togheter. I attach a very good photo (lol), can sketch up the circuit if still not working

Hello!
I'm facing a strange issue with SMC3 running in Mode2 with just one motor attached as motor 2 through 43A IBT-2 driver and Arduino Uno: after opening the windows application and running any motion command, sine wave for example, everything works fine for 5-10 seconds and then motor halts.

Yellow PWM graph keeps being generated, but nothing moves until I either reset Arduino or close/reopen the Windows application. Resetting logic power to the motor driver or power to the motor itself does not have any effect.

What could it be? Can it be related to the fact that Arduino and motor driver logic are powered through USB from laptop?

Now i get the SMC3 Setup utiliy as attached image, the PWM is variating, i suppost the motor is starting? I mesure its input voltage with a voltmeter and there is 0V as input, and the motor dont roll

There is always the possibility of USB errors regardless of what they are connected to if the power source for the ports is unable to supply enough current for everything connected to them.

If that's all that is connected to your laptop though that shouldn't be a problem.

Yes that looks like it is running correctly. I note that you are using a Mega, I've never tested on this and never got round to checking the specs to make sure all is the same - although I can't think why that would be a problem.

It is most likely a wiring issue or a problem with the IBT. Recheck all wiring and make sure it is secure. You can make a simple test probe using an LED in series with a 1k resistor and some wires. Connect one end to ground (make sure LED is correct way round) and probe the signals with the other end. LED will light when signal is high. Just be careful not to short anything.

Note the motors switch OFF when the green line moves outside the red lines. They will switch off if there is noise on the pot wires and even one sample is read outside the range. The pot needs to be inside the valid range when you power up. @Grigory have you checked this also?

@Pit and I can confirm your sketch runs without issue on a Mega also.

Mostly if such issues happens the DIYler did not read all content of the manual, did not wire correctly, did not solder correctly or use faulty (cheap not working) drivers or defective Ard clones.

Thanks, I checked that. The corresponding motor button says "ON". It works fine for several seconds, sine wave target is followed quite closely. And then all of a sudden the motor just stops.
Upon restart of the Windows application the motor moves to the middle of pot range and holds still until I run any of the movement commands. Then it again works just fine but very soon stops.

Try first Kp=200 and PWMmax=100. Then raise PWMmax up to 180. If no issues then raise KP until the motor stops (eventually).

Will try that tonight, thanks.

Do you have a theory about what is happening?