Tronic's AMC motor motion-controller with pwm/servo output

Hi Thanos You have a good memory Yeah im still around like my user name says im ia wannabe so tend to have my finger in loads of pie's LOL will dig the units out of the workshop buyt pretty sure they will be around 5amps .. just got one and they are made by a compay called FAMCON 24VDC 71 RPM says 2 amps on the nameplate but my dodgy eyes may have misread that any ways as always major thanks personally for the work you do have to say for the average DIY Wanna make one guys you make easy ... now all i have to do is get cracking and get the boards built .. my parts arrived from maplins today so bigger just waiting for the IRF4905's and IRFZ44 Transistors they dont stock those at Maplins so had to go elswhere.. Thanks for the rapid reply thanos...

Hi to all,

I have a surprise for you all! Erich has just sent me his implementation of a black box enclosure for the AMC1.5 & DSMhb1.2b electronics! His job is so fantastic!!!! Seeing it makes me wanna build one too!!!






It has it all! LCD, Fuses, Fan, connectors, even a 12V Regulated Power Supply inside it!!!

Thanks Erich!!!! :clap: :clap:
I hope you present here in the forum your motion cockpit soon!


Regards, Thanos

DPS is board i think the PCM from your dictionary.. today i will make the board for lcd and i have togo to buy a driller because i cant find anyone.. the motion cont.from erich is so nice.. i want to make somethink like that,, buy Mila

hello today i make new board for Motion controller but wwhen i finished and begin drilling holes. i decided that the atmel connector 40 pin is not right in the hole also some another parts? what have i to do but i dont understand that i can give atmel into the 40 pins connector but connector is not on the hole form your pdf (v 1.5) what have i to do can i resize a little bit your image for etching service?here are few photos, also i bought an lcd panel with blue light.. Iam so dissapointed because here is this problem with atmel connector:-( Please write me as soon as possible..

Hi lotada,

If you've set your Acrobat Reader to original zoom, your printer may have scaled the image

Regards
Christian

doyou think that could be this problem? ok i will try to print it again tomorow. and i will see.. thank you verymuch..

Remove all zoom from acrobat when printing!! My PCB's are 1:1 printed on paper (or transparency). Just do a test print and place on it some components to see if there is still deviation in size before etching a new board...

Regards, Thanos

Thanos, Here is the information on the Mega128 controller.



Read the notes file as you look at the circuit diagrams.

Please excuse the circuit diagrams as I drew them while I was traceing the board out.

I would like to turn this into a universal controller for sims for those people that can't make their own boards/controllers and I'm sure I could modify it to suit. I would like your suggestions on what would be the satisfactory features of a controller and of course the features an ultimate controller would have.
Your suggestion of how I should modify this board to do the same would be appreciated. (yes I know 6 output compares would be the ultimate but 5 will have to be the initial version)

As for the previous RS232 question , What are you useing for the standard for the positionong data ? and should I write it to suit any other sim data ?? Also how do you get more than 2DOF data out of x-sim? Is there a guide on this data and x-sim setup for more DOF's?

Once I get that info i'll start to write some test code over the next month.

Hope you can understand my drawing scribble.!

Zap.

hello to all first iwant to say to all big thank you because itwas another measure on acrobat and on paper i had a zoomed this pcb in acrobat now i see its all ok. oh Damn..Today i will again solder another board(right board)..i am going to buy a 100K potentiometers to test my module i found a 300degree it could be ok? or have i buy another one? Bye Mila

Hi Mila,

Don't worry. We have seen worst... one of us here, etched the boards mirrored... :lol:

300 degree rotation pots? Why not? But then you will need to use reduction gears of 1/3.3 ration to get close to the 90degrees of rotation of the joyrider...

Regards, Thanos

Hi Zap,

I guess I should print all these notes to be able to read them... My neck is still aches from trying to read all the up-side-down notes in my browser...

It also looks that the Atmega128 card sits (thru connectors) on a the bigger board that hosts the terminal connectors and serial port and other switches... I don't know if we can have access to the rest of the ports without discarding the host board... Anyway, lots of stuff to study.

With 5 PWM ports we could drive a FD401 type simulator... Or several intermediate number of DOF simulators... We will see about that later...

Thanks for the photos and the notes... :

Best Regards, Thanos

Thanos, Yeah I thought I forgot something. Here is the side shot .



You can see the LCD header behind SW6.
I've allready looked at mounting aditional I/O conectors on top of the existing green sockets.

I found your post on implementing PID in microcontrollers. This is just the help I need to keep on coding.
Any info on the serial data standards that you's are useing?

Zap..

Hi everyone.

I have been observing this forum for a few months, watching the developments. I've constructed the AVR-DSMhb boards a week ago, and have been experiencing a few problems with getting it to run.

But first, thank you Thanos in particular, and everyone else who have contributed to the development of this awesome project!

The first problem I encountered was with the trace accuracy of some of the pcb images and pdf's. Perhaps I may be wrong and no disrespect, but there seems to be two mistakes in the AVR pcb developed with the Sprint-Layout 5 program. I used this latest development to create my pcb's.

@ lotada, I see your board design has this same trace problem I experienced.

Specifically...p.33 of this forum,

Sprint_layout_5_tools.gif If you enlarge this image you will see the pcb traces match all earlier developments

differences found in...
amc1_5_sprint_layout.pdf
amc1_5_bottom.pdf
AMC1_5_gerber_excellon.zip
amc1_5_photo_top.gif
amc1_5_photo_bottom.gif
amc1_5_DSMhb1_2_wiper_motors_wiring_thumbnail.gif
amc1_5_DSMhb1_2_wiper_motors_wiring.pdf

Difference #1...following the trace in the ISP programming port area...proceed from serial port pin 3, through the 10k resistor, at the junction of the base of transistor BC547-10k res-15k res, there is a tracce link to the 6-pin header MISO.

After I removed this link, the programming of the Atmel with PonyProgram worked flawlessly.

Difference #2...look at the Molex connector found in the I/O data port area...there are two RX connectors, look at the lower-left one. The trace link from the Molex TX connector, center pin (+), does not connect to the Molex RX connector, center pin (+ Vcc).

Before I soldered a wire link between these two pins, the LED would not light up to show communication (unless the RX link cable was inserted). Vcc was not getting to all of the components here.



p.37 of this forum,

differences found in...
Parallel_LCD_photo_top.gif
Parallel_LCD_photo_bottom.gif
Parallel_LCD_photo_sprint_combined.gif

These files show the pcb with the RS and E labels for pin 3-4 transposed, at least in comparison to datasheets and earlier images of the LCD pcb. This may cause some problems for someone.

If I am mistaken about all the above, and there are good reasons for the differences, then please accept my apologies.

Unfortunately, my issues are not solved yet. I can now write and read to the ATmega644, but it fails to start after programming. I also cannot communicate with it via the serial data port and HyperTerminal. The LCD never displays the firmware info, only the upper row of 16 block characters. I am using a Newhaven LCD (NHD-0216K1Z-FSB-GBW-L) with the Samsung KS0066U controller which is supposed to be equivalent to the Hitachi 44780 and the Samsung KS0070B (used by Promy's LCD which apparently works correctly.)

I read Erich's solutions, but after the pcb trace fixes, programming workes either with 4.0Mhz or 18.432Mhz. This does not seem to be my current problem. I'm proceeding with further investigations, and the pcb appears to be spot-on with no flaws (it was produced by ExpressPCB), and the soldering is good.

@Thanos, is the firmware for the 18.432Mhz crystal, [PWM_AMC15_2DOF_V1_CRYSTAL18.HEX] compatible with the ATmega644 mcu? This is what I am using to kind of future-proof the AVR. Is there an alternative method to test the MCU without relying on the LCD?

I have also tried it with CKSEL0 set with 0 and 1. Not sure which to use because the video guide shows it as checked, yet your [Thanos_ponyprog_guide1_1.pdf] suggests unchecked. Is there a definitive choice?

Regards and Thanks,
R-eng

Great Job R-eng

I had these two Problems too. Your right - i removed the link you wrote and now the flashing works great :clap:

Thanks

Martin

Hi R-eng,

Wow! I must have missed that... Thanks for notify and the quick fix you proposed to all others that making it right now. I'll fix them as soon is possible...!

I was designing the earlier PCB layouts in ExpressPCB but some months ago switched to Sprint-Layout and started converting the old designs in it, to also have gerber and excellon files of them available. But I haven't had the chance to order some of my Sprint layout and test them as I had many left from the original layout!

About the Atmega644. Don't try to load on it the Atmega8535 firmware (PWM_AMC15_2DOF_V1_CRYSTAL18.HEX). It won't work. I have to recompile the code specifically for the atmega644 type... which is this:
ATMEGA644_PWM_AMC15_2DOF_V1_CRYSTAL18.zip

Also it better to have CKSEL0 checked as I show in my video.

Try the new firmware and if it works, I'll prepare it for any other faster crystal you need.

Thanks!!! :clap:

Best Regards, Thanos

Hi Zap,

I use 115Kbps speed and the receive string is 5 bytes long. It consists of:

Two characters that are signal that motion data are following. I used AB
A special character with value 255
And another two bytes that are the Y,X data (8bit each)

The string looks like this: AB|255||Y||X|

Also the main code is checking serial port for new data, 307 times per second!!!

Hope that helps.

Regards, Thanos

Thanos, I'm going to use the receive complete interupt generated from the first character 0x41 (A) , then check 0x42 (B) and 0xFF (255) then load 0xYY and 0xXX into somewhere usefull.

The force sender information says the data is sent every 32ms so I can't see any point of polling for data any quicker. It should only take 0.5ms for reception of 5 bytes @ 115kbps.

Can you see any problem useing interupts for data reception, the PWM's will be output compares and independant of program run speed?

Also how do you get more than 2 DOF (X/Y) data??

Zap.

@ Thanos...you the man!

Your firmware worked like a charm. I used the 18.432Mhz crystal to program, and it ran right away after flashing. I then did the pot-calibration to set for full read of 1023 at ~90'. It all functions correctly.

Thanks for your rapid response!

I will now test the DSMhb with a motor attached to see how well it performs, hopefully with no issues. Instead of the IRF4905LPBF Mosfet, I am using the supposedly equivalent STMicroelectronis STP80PF55 because it was the only version as a match from my source supplier Mouser Electronics. All specs seem ok, although your thoughts on this are welcome.

I also have the 22.1184Mhz and 24.0Mhz crystals to try, and would like to finalize on the 24. This is only a 20% overclock so it should be fine I would think. Additional firmware for them would be appreciated.

You may notice my controllers are slightly different. That is because I have used ExpressPCB before to design and manufacture pcb's, and since I had to draw the circuit anyhow, I tweaked the design, mainly visible on the DSMhb.

I will look forward to when you release firmware to support more axis. I want to implement a 3DOF design similar to the FD401. Although, my thoughts on the yaw motion will be a little different. For now, I will tap into the banking (lateral-g) axis and send it to a 3rd DSMhb. My vision is; I want to limit the yaw to rapid ~10cm movements (pivoting near the nose), per significant lateral-g increments, this to be followed by a washout. A total of 3 successive movements to the same direction would be allowed until maximum deflection of the platform is attained and no further movement to that direction would be allowed until one or more washouts (or opposite direction) create movement space. I still am not set on how this will be controlled, but I am working on it. Any suggestions?

From this description you can surmise that my highly modified joyrider design, which for now I will refer to as thrillrider, is designed for racing simulation, and primarily my choice of Rfactor.

Regards, R-eng

Hi R-eng,

Welcome!

Would be great to see your thrillrider in our DIY sim section, perhpaps with a description, and some progress notifications!

Regards
Christian

Hi egoexpress,

I have a video of the thrillrider in motion, but only one (pitch) motion implemented currently. Now that I have the AVR-DSMhb functioning, I can test it with the motor drive, and then finish the 2nd (lat-g, banking) motor drive.

Should I attach the .flv here, or link it to another site? What would the max file size be if set here?

I will move this thrillrider stuff to your suggested topic, DIY location.

Regards, R-eng