Open skylar opened 10 years ago
So, first off, we have to figure out how much power the project draws. Some sample parts:
So, power for the logic is negligible. Most of the power goes into the stepper motors. We're looking at maybe 1.6A as a draw for the Yue-based version, and maybe under 1.5 for a Spark core.
So, we could power the bot for a little over 90 min on a 2200mha battery pack.
The driver boards seem to do better the more voltage you give them (up to 45V). They can charge the coils faster and deliver up to 12V to the motors. However, they seem to work fine with as little as 5V, with the side effect of less torque.
I'm looking into various ways we could wire in power from a battery. A couple considerations:
One option for power are these packs. 8.4 V, 2200mA.
http://www.pololu.com/category/108/8.4-v-nimh-battery-packs
Also, we could wire two in parallel to get over an hour of power. Another option is to use off-the-shelf AA batteries, and pack them into 2-3 battery arrays in holders:
Another option might be a big pack lipo pack like this:
https://www.sparkfun.com/products/11856 https://www.sparkfun.com/products/10470
Downside seems to be a special charger for the multi-cell packs used in these blocks.
My setup so far. 12V / 2A input which splits out 5V power to my board via a voltage regulator (orange wires).
This is a hard part. Reading up on this is really fun though and it makes very obvious why RC cars really eat up the battery!
This page is a good starter:
https://learn.sparkfun.com/tutorials/how-to-power-a-project/remotemobile-power