The Unnamed (FW)

[kane]

You're quite within your rights to build automation but you might want to look at adding some code to shut off the output on a switch or second input to switch the output off under your control so if it goes wrong you can quickly turn it off, for example if the pot becomes dislodged.

[Pinski1]

Finally got it working, hopefully some get some videos tomorrow/later on 'today'!

Turns out it just wasn't handling a function call inside an interrupt service routine correctly and that problem was masked by my custom calibrations in EEPROM getting wiped. But its all fixed now.

All I've done is turn one of the pins from the unused channel, which is an analogue input, into a way of sensing the position of the lifting arm which then stops it if it gets too close to the end of travel in either direction. It doesn't do any fancy major error detection yet but should work okay. The external Arduino is just a handy source of pre-calibrated servo signals on demand, I'm not adding it into the final robot.

... there are plenty of off-the-shelf controllers that will do positional feedback and/or end stops.

I couldn't find any that were ~£30 for 85Amps, the Tz-85A is cheap, plentiful and the controller is nice and powerful due to original purpose of sensor-less brushless motor controlling.

The next tasks are to:

• Get the robot fully armoured and driving around to test handling
• Test the lifter arm mechanism with all the bits attached
• Test the lifter arm mechanism against various test objects

Much further on down the line I need to actually put the battery in an armoured section with padding and see if I can't get some tensioners on the belts or buy tighter belts.

Yay, progress!