Well it seems I have learned something at uni. I started the weekend trying to convert a 3.3V PWM signal from my BeagleBone Black to a 5V signal. A couple of transistors and a few resistors later and I had a 5V PWM signal.
Unfortunately this signal wasn’t the best for my motor controller (Sabertooth 2x12), so a capacitor and a resistor later and I had a nice analog 0-5V signal. Still not quite good enough though, there was a bit of a DC offset in there, so 50% wasn’t at 2.5V - which is the “stop” voltage. Circuit is here http://troy.dack.com.au/BBB/PWMtoAnalog.sd for those interested
Reading the docs for my motor controller and it looked like control via serial messages was the way to go. So after delving into Python classes I now have better control of the motors. Next step is getting the quadrature encoders on the motors into the BBB so that I can do some basic navigation.
Ultrasonic and IR sensors are to come so it doesn’t run into things.
Lastly will be wireless control via web sockets.
#beagleboneblack #beaglebot #python Electronics