I have a Rover with two Brushed motors - one for the Throttle and another for the Steering. Both are connected to ESCs controlled by a PWM and Direction signals. I was able to configure the Throttle channel so the Throttle stick works as expected:
all the way down - PWM=100%, Direction Pin = 0
in the middle - PWM 0%
all the way up - PWM=100%, Direction Pin = 1
I am trying to do the same with the Roll (GroundSteering) channel, and I am stuck. It seems Roll PWM behaves differently, and I cannot find any configuration parameters responsible for this. The behavior of the Roll stick is linear from left to right:
to the left - PWM=0%
in the middle - PWM 50%
to the right - PWM=100%
Is it possible to configure the Roll channel in the same way as the Throttle?
I am using MATEK H743 with the latest ArduRover firmware.
I am new to ArduRover, any support is very appreciated.
I am guessing PWM channel is not the problem here.
Is that brushed steering motor equipped with any position sensor? hall? potentiometer? whatever?
If not… then this can not be simply controlled in a way You would like to.
It (motor) can be enabled with whatever PWM in certain direction and as soon motor get enough torque to start rotation it will go all the way to 100%.
To get proportinal steering You need some kind of feedback from steering position to make a closed loop steering, and then You can get movement proportional to RC channel value.
There is no feedback at all, the motor is connected to the wheels via viscous coupling followed by a gearbox. If you turn the motor on, the wheels will start moving, and when you turn the motor off, the wheels will stay in that position. I clearly understand this, but this is how the vehicle is designed.
What I am trying to do is to replace the original RC and all the electronics (which are broken) with an ArduRover + TX16S. I am wondering if it is possible to control such a steering mechanism with the ArduRover.
The backup plan is to replace this mechanism with a regular servo. This will give proportional steering, and this approach will definitely work.
The vehicle was “driveable” before, and the mechanical part is not modified, so I suspect the part of a control loop should lie within the driver’s brain. I think this is just a matter of getting used to it.
I will try to make a converter from the regular “servo 1-2ms PWM” to “100%-0%-100% PWM plus Direction pin” on some basic microcontroller. This should work without any tricky configuration.
If I fail, I will replace the steering motor with a servo.