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

Motor1 on the DSMhb is coupled with POT2, and Motor2 with POT1. Just swap the connections on the pots.

That was a minor assignment mistake while developing years ago, but I think I mentioned it lots of times.

Thanos

That still wouldn't explain why both pots affect a single motor in joyrider mode would it? I'll await the arrival of my new fets and hope they solve the issue.

You could connect the unused pot ports to ground to prevent them from floating. If you have two potentiometer connected, this doesn't happen.

I've finally replaced the IRF3205 with the IRLZ44N and my above problems have been solved.

I am getting an occasional issues where the AMC appears to be resetting / unresponsive if a particularly aggressive series of movements are sent through X-SIM (eg manually moving the sliders in test plugin very fast, or harsh bumps from a racing game) Sometimes the LCD will also go blank during use and won't come back on until a reset.

If the above happens I need to stop X-Sim, reset the AMC and restart X-Sim.

I haven't spent a significant amount of time trying to diagnose yet but if anyone else has had similar issues let me know.


Also, when resetting the AMC, if X-Sim is still running should it automatically pickup X-Sim's outputs without the need to stop and start X-Sim again? Or will I need to stop X-Sim, reset the AMC then start X-Sim again?

Thanks for the great project Thanos!

Okay so a little more testing tonight as to why the AMC stops responding to Xsim and resets itself.

This only appears to happen when motors are connected.

Could it be a lack of filtering caps on my motors.

They're just small 12v hobby gearbox motors at the moment, not wipers.

Without motors, on the hbridge leds connected the AMC survived a 1 hour test. With motors attached the LCD blanks and ancient resets in a few minutes.

Any other suggestions?

Yes, Don't use the same power supply for motors and AMC...
Don't ground together the motor housings and use shielded cable for potentiometers if possible.

Thanos

Cool, at the moment the AMC is running from a 9v power pack, and the DSMhb is running off a 12v AGM car battery.

The pots already have shielded cable, and the motors are sitting free on some wood.

Will look into some filtering caps for the motors. Thanks for your help.

Also make sure the potentiometers you have are not jittery, meaning producing to much friction noise. I happen to use one of these old ones ready to quit potentiometer, and it froze the AMC and trip the safety switches on the power supply of the motors!!

Fitted some capacitors as described here to my test motor:

http://www.beam-wiki.org/wiki/Reducing_Motor_Noise

No more issues - AMC running with DSBhb for a number of hours of F1 2011 without an issue.

Now the electronics are working - time to build the actual simulator - more fun to come.

Thanks for the assistance!

Before reading the guide I bought this cheap usb to serial cord.

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?Vi ... OU:US:1123

After reading the guide I saw that it should be an FTDI cable. Any chance the above cord would work? Is the problem with just the programming or will it not work to send data from xsim to the AMC either.

Just wondering if I'm out $2!

Thanks,

Matt

Sorry my friend, the cable you bought is based on the Prolific PL-2303... Doesn't work with AMC... !!
No wonder is so cheap. The good ones FTDI based solutions are more into $11-$14 range.

Thanos

Thanks for the quick reply. This one looks like a better choice.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/New-USB-Serial- ... 2eadfd77aa

Just ironed traces onto my first attempt at the AMC. I got a box full of parts in the mail yesterday so as soon as I etch it I'm ready to go!

Thanks,

Matt

I just failed etching my 3rd AMC board. It seems no matter much I sand, clean and iron, when I go to etch some of my toner traces fall off. At this point I'm considering sending out a board to be cut. Has anyone considered having a larger batch made to keep the cost down? Looking at some websites I think if 4 sets of the AMC and Hbridge were ordered the price could be as low as $30 for the pair.

Alternatively if someone wants to etch one and sell it to me I'd probably be interested

Thanks,

Matt

Hello tronicgr, I have followed your post, and finally got up to date, it is impresive the 4 years of work.. congrats!!!!

Is there a link where you can get all the proyect?

found it, thanks.....

Hi Thanos,

I was wondering if you had the gerber files for your H-bridge posted somewhere. I found the AMC gerber files from page 37 of this post and I didn't see any later posts so I'm assuming this is the latest.

Thanks!

Matt

I found the H-bridge in another post.

If anyone is interested I combined the 2 gerber files sets together to save some money on setup fees. They're posted below.

Thanks!

Matt

Hello,I am tying to write firmware for Arduino instead to use AMC controler.

I just want to know what Tuning Parameters Kp, Ki & Kd for PID algorithm you use in firmware?
Are they constants or they are changing in time?
What SampleTime pid uses?
Thanks, and sorry on my bad English

Hello fellow-builders,

I am currently in process of learning alot of great skills :?
Thanos and Co BIG thanks for the possibility to make one my own!!!
I wanted to mill my own pcb,(made my own cnc) but i could not figure out how!
So i learned my first NEW skill. ETCHING.... (kinda fun to do).
Then i have to drill (mmm really small drillbit!!! i used 3 of them : )
Then solder (my first!!!)
But i manage so far...
ETCHING:

DRILLING:

SOLDERING:

2 LED ON ? is that oke?

When RESET is pressed red led comes on ? is that oke ?

PS. still waiting for my blue lcd from hongkong :thbd: (takes a long time to arrive)

Greets from holland,
Michael

got the lcd !!! nice blue and white lettering ... Running at 22.11??? MHZ... H-Bridge working also... SWEET!!!
PS. don't forget while flashing to READ and WRITE the fuses... or als it runs at 8MHZ!!!
Greets Michael