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Christopher Hawkins made this cool DIY 3d printed stepper motor: [via]
This is a programmable stepper motor and driver that I made out of some nails, magnet wire, neodymium magnets, a digispark microcontroller, and a 3D printed piece that I designed around these things. My goal was to make something about the size of a business card that moved. You can’t exactly fit it in your wallet but it does indeed move. It just a first draft- there’s lots of room for improvement. It has a step angle of 15 degrees (although the way I’m driving it, it is 7.5 degrees.)
3D Printed Stepper Motor - [Link]
Steven Keeping writes:
The brushless DC (BLDC) motor is becoming increasingly popular in sectors such as automotive (particularly electric vehicles (EV)), HVAC, white goods and industrial because it does away with the mechanical commutator used in traditional motors, replacing it with an electronic device that improves the reliability and durability of the unit.
An Introduction to Brushless DC Motor Control - [Link]
Texas Instruments has introduced two 3-phase, brushless DC (BLDC) motor drivers that allow designers to spin motors in minutes rather than months. [via]
Traditional BLDC motor designs require five to ten components, along with firmware. The sensorless 5-V, 680-mA DRV10866 and the 12-V, 1.5-A DRV11873 cut this component count to one with no firmware required, significantly reducing board space and system costs. The devices also provide the lowest operating voltage and standby current to reduce power consumption by up to 75%.
Spin Motors in Minutes Without Using Sensors - [Link]
This is a simple project of Android Bluetooth Car with Bluetooth control. This project is open source and multiplatform: Arduino (Processing), STM32, MSP430, PIC, AVR, FEZ Panda II (.NET Micro Framework) and may be even В Raspberry Pi.
To control the car used Android-device with a built-in accelerometer. Tilt forward – car goes forward, tilt to the left – car turns to the left, tilt back – car goes back. Speed of movement or rotation depends on how much you tilt the device. Sensitivity and value of the tilt set in the configuration Android-apps. Also are provided a normal way to control: the buttons on the screen. In addition to all I implemented the touch control. Total 3 ways to control the RC Car.
Simple RC car for beginners (Android control via Bluetooth) - [Link]
Here’s a Motor Control via Proximity Sensing. In this article, we go step-by-step through the process of understanding, designing and building a system that uses an infrared proximity sensor for input, correlates that input to how far away an object is from the sensor and then drives a motor and some LEDs at distinct speeds depending upon the proximity of the object.
IR Proximity Motor Control - [Link]
A booster board for the MSP430 LaunchPad controls brushless DC motors with or without sensors. A bunch of double NPN transistor MBT2222AD ICs drive the motors. [via]
I thought that I would share my project on the forum. I call it BLDC Booster. It is a booster pack for the MSP430 LaunchPad that allows for sensored or sensorless control of a brushless DC motor. It is open source hardware & firmware under Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike license.
Sensorless Brushless DC Motor Drive with MSP430 - [Link]
soldersplash.co.uk folks are creating a 24 channel Servo controller. It’s controllable over SPI or USB and can be stacked on top of our SplashBase board to enable network control. Up to 5 of these can be used to enable control of 120 servos in total.
24 Channel Servo Controller- [Link]
makeyourbot.org writes:
The Mantis 9.1 design is a radical departure from version 8 and earlier. Most notably, the part count has been almost halved! The current design has 13 parts, all of which can be made with a handsaw and a drill press. Also, I’ve traded away my alignment free exactly-constrained design for extra stiffness. Several unsuccessful attempts to eradicate the last of the slop in the Z axis on version 8 lead me back to the world of over-constrained parallel rods. My previous attempts at an over-constrained design (versions 1-5) all failed because I was unable to make the rods sufficiently parallel to avoid jamming. What to do?
Mantis 9.1 CNC Mill - [Link]
This project explains how to use an FPGA or CPLD to take input from one device (an ADC) and then output appropriate signals to a motor controller IC, that provides precise control over the DC motor’s speed and direction.
Since we now know how to create PWM output with a CPLD or FPGA and we also know how to understand dynamic analog input using an A-to-D converter, we can actually combine these two functions together and create an FPGA DC motor controller!
Even though I have written many, other, motor control articles, none of them used a CPLD or FPGA as the main controller. This article will focus on explaining how to use a CPLD to take input from one device and then output appropriate signals to a motor controller IC, that will give us precise control over the DC motor’s speed and direction.
FPGA DC Motor Control - [Link]
Sameer Gupta writes:
It is an small & inexpensive project to reduce overflowing of water.In this project,a motor for water pumping is connected with this system.When water reaches to its top level,motor will automatically switched-off.
Tank Motor Pump Controller - [Link]
