Keep motors off if battery power below voltage threshold

laurb9 / PanoController-Firmware

Platform for high-resolution panoramic photography, supporting 3D-printed PanoController board, Gigapan EPIC 100, Nodal Ninja Mecha E1 and other platforms.

MIT License

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Keep motors off if battery power below voltage threshold #64

Open laurb9 opened 7 years ago

laurb9 commented 7 years ago

Do not activate the ENABLE line if the Vin voltage drops below the minimum required for the drivers/motor combination to function, or the minimum acceptable battery voltage.

A threshold slightly above 5V would prevent the drivers being activated while powered from USB, if the step-down leaks current from Vcc to Vin.

Note: also add 10K pull-up on ENABLE to avoid activating the drivers on power-up until setup() got around to setting up the pin.

laurb9 commented 7 years ago

Just not activating ENABLE is probably fine. The other case, where Vin was good and then drops due to battery depletion, could be a problem. Turning off motors with a heavy lens can slam the lens into the pano unit, so maybe a controlled descent is better (but we don't know when to stop).

stale[bot] commented 4 years ago

This issue has been automatically marked as stale because it has not had recent activity. It will be closed if no further activity occurs. Thank you for your contributions.