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A scalable board to prototype motion control applications for automatic balanced robot or any other robot on wheels.
It was the 2013 when we presented a control board to make a clone of the famous SegWay: the OpenWheels project. In recent years, the focus on systems to stabilize unstable ones grew up sensibly. Just look at the many projects proposed on the net to see how many people has ventured into making simple (or not) unstable robot, better known by the English term “balanced robot”. We have improved our first project by exploiting new technologies on the market, so a new board was born, the OpenWheels2.
It is an all-in-one board to control movements on any of your robotic projects. The board we are going to present is in fact equipped (and expandable) with everything needed to make even complex robot, so not only balanced robots.
The project was forked from the SegWay clone control board to control instead a balanced robot that we will call Personal Robot.
Features
The main innovation is on the processor, which passes from an ATmega328P to ATmega2560 maintaining compatibility with Arduino and considerably increasing the available pins and UART modules, very useful for the connectivity features. The IMU module has better performances while the power MOSFET stage is unchanged. The new board has the same dimensions as before and the same connectors, so it is an easy upgrade for those who have OpenWheels v1.
The new board features are:
- compatible with Arduino 2560;
- ready to use XBee and Bluetooth modules;
- supports up to two DC motors with a maximum current of 20A (peak 30A);
- has input power voltage and current sensors;
- encoder input connector;
- supports both analog and digital IMU modules
