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Wednesday, November 07, 2007

DC Motor Driver v1.0 Documented

Just wanted to give a heads up that the new DC Motor Driver board has been fully documented with full build pics, information on the board, and even some cool hacks you can do with it like drive a (small) stepper motor.

Please note, that this is a prototype board for the next generation of Arduino based RepRap electronics, and is not currently supported by our software. I'm working hard on getting the Arduino firmware up and running, but if anyone wants to help out just drop a line in the comments or email me.
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2 comments:

  1. geo01005November 07, 2007 8:25 PM

    Not to jump on the Arduino development system, but wouldn't it be nice to just stick with C? Perhaps the move to the Arduino language is due to the fact that sdcc has quite a few limitations and bugs? I sure had a rough time getting SDCC to work worth a darn. If a platform change is being considered, then perhaps a move the Atmel AVR devices? Price is very comparable, I feel a much better platform. But More than that is the wonderful development environment. The AVRgcc compiler can be executed from within Avr Studio. This also provided a great debugging environment. AVRgcc has a GNU license. The Avr Studio is not opensource but is free. It sure made my life a lot easier as far as programing micro controllers in C. I understand that the Arduino system runs on the same PIC chips, but I think that the switch to the AVR platform is worth it. Anyway, my two bits.

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  2. Zach SmithNovember 07, 2007 9:01 PM

    jonathan, perhaps you should read up on the Arduino (http://www.arduino.cc):

    its an open project (not language) that consists of hardware + software.

    the hardware is a board based around the atmega168 (NOT PIC!) with integrated USB and various other things to make using it easy.

    the software is a java IDE that is a super easy install on the big 3 platforms. you code in C (or C++), and you can upload your program to the Arduino in one click. configuration is dead simple. it uses avr-gcc in the background to compile the code.

    it also includes a library that makes doing common things in the microprocessor easy. things such as analogRead, digitalRead, digitalWrite are all functions you can use. its much more accessible to your average developer.

    if you read up on it with an open mind, you'll realize its one of the best open source hardware projects out there (after reprap of course ;)

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