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You're reading from  Mastering Beaglebone Robotics

Product typeBook
Published inDec 2014
Reading LevelBeginner
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ISBN-139781783988907
Edition1st Edition
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Author (1)
Richard Grimmett
Richard Grimmett
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Richard Grimmett

Richard Grimmett has more fun that should be allowed working on robotics projects while teaching Computer Science and Electrical Engineering at Brigham Young University Idaho. He has a Bachelors and Masters degree in Electrical Engineering and a PhD in Leadership Studies. He also has 26 years of experience in the Radar and Telecommunications industries, and even has one of the original brick phones. He has written books on the basics of using the BeagleBone Black for robotics projects, and another for the Raspberry PI and yet another for the Arduino.
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Connecting a motor controller to control the speed of your tracked platform


The first step to make the platform mobile is adding a motor controller. This allows us to control the speed of each wheel (or track) independently. Before you get started, let's spend some time understanding the basics of motor control. The unit moves by engaging the motors. If the desired direction is straight, the motors are run at the same speed. If you want to turn the unit, the motors are run at different speeds. The unit can turn in a circle if you run one motor forward and one backwards.

DC motors are fairly straightforward devices. The speed and direction of this motor are controlled by the magnitude and polarity of the voltage applied to its terminals. The higher the voltage, the faster the motor will turn. If you reverse the polarity of the voltage, you can reverse the direction in which the motor is turning.

The magnitude and polarity of the voltage are not the only important factors when you think about...

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Mastering Beaglebone Robotics
Published in: Dec 2014Publisher: ISBN-13: 9781783988907

Author (1)

author image
Richard Grimmett

Richard Grimmett has more fun that should be allowed working on robotics projects while teaching Computer Science and Electrical Engineering at Brigham Young University Idaho. He has a Bachelors and Masters degree in Electrical Engineering and a PhD in Leadership Studies. He also has 26 years of experience in the Radar and Telecommunications industries, and even has one of the original brick phones. He has written books on the basics of using the BeagleBone Black for robotics projects, and another for the Raspberry PI and yet another for the Arduino.
Read more about Richard Grimmett