Sunday, May 27, 2012

Be part of the project


Hi to all,

I decided I should start making available my AMC644USB board that I designed and build in a small volume back in 2011 (2-1-2011). I had them build but didn't had enough parts for a kit back then. Along that some setbacks left it hanging for a while. Now I have new firmware for it that supports  all the the basic functions I wanted. And with the feedback from whoever want the boards I could make even more perfect! I have about 15 boards now and if there is enough interest I'll make more.


This board has some features on it that are missing from the AMC1.6 that I designed this year. It has support for driving AC motor drives providing them with 10v analog signal for speed and in addition with an inexpensive darlington array it can provide 24v for the direction signals. Also it has onboard contact encoder and two buttons (one provided by the encoder itself) to implement a simple to use realtime state machine menu.

In more details:

1. The USB FTDI breakout board provides 5v power to the AMC644USB board along with serial interface at speeds of 115kbps.
2. The refresh rates for the new position data is now 1ms (0.001 second), so it can recalculate and reposition the motors 1000 times per second.
3. The LCD is powered from the AMC644USB board now. No need for extra power.
4. The Analog out circuit (for 0-10v) is powered from an onboard DC-DC stepup converter also powered from the USB power.
5. The PWM signal for the motors is running at 21kHz with 10-bit resolution.
6. The analog inputs (for potentiometers) are also 10-bit resolution.
7. The motor position quadrature optical encoders are connected to the ADC ports (interrupt capture input) and can count more than 131070 pulses per second (I could not make my test motor turn faster to see the limits yet). And end positions for the encoder will be determined using limit switches (on the rest ADC ports).

In the software side, It handles now 16-bit values for each of the two axis meaning the motor now can have 65535 positions if quadrature optical encoder is used for position feedback. Also the calculations done inside the PID are now Integer type with no rounding. For now I made available Proportional term in the LCD menu settings, but Integral and Derivative will be available as well.

The Atmega644 will be pre-programmed by me with a cool bootloader and the firmware. Then any updates or requested changes can be downloaded to the Atmega644 with a click on the computer side using a nice GUI interface programmer through USB. It does not use the same FTDI USB programmer as the AMC1.6, but a better one.


So far I have two of them fully assembled and ready to go and the rest in parts.


So anyone interested to be part of this project just contact me in my mail: tronickod@yahoo.com


Thanos













6 comments:

  1. Thus looks great, just what im looking for to run a 240v setup. Registered interest awaiting your reply. P.S AMC1.6usb was just confirmed today leaving US soil, its in the snail mail will take upto 3 weeks to turn up, just enough time to source all parts. Will send ya a pic of produced board and details for anyone who wants to order one, they have all the details open to all, Im not selling them, just done the leg work hopefully making it easier for others to order and build.

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  2. Hi Bob, thanks for your interest. Did you email me? I kinda trying to put inquire messages in priority among other stuff I have to take care of, so if you did, you will hear from me soon.

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  3. Hello Thanos!
    Congratulations on the new project AVR v1.6 Motion Controller.
    I am interested in purchasing this board. I sent an email to you.
    I am awaiting more information about the project.

    thank you

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  4. Thanx Thanos

    I am looking forward to purchasing the full electronics package from you to fabricate a motion simulator in India using wiper motors if your price is right. I can make the steel chassis with its hinges, etc. & also assemble the needed computer with a nice graphic card. What i will need are the complete set of electronics between the Motors & the computer ( interface, controllers, etc ) . we use 220V / 60hz in India.

    rgds
    Joseph
    India

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  5. Hello
    Good afternoon now i send mail for you. I have greast intyeres in your product
    best regards
    cameranesi
    Brasil

    ReplyDelete
  6. Sir, I just recived your AMC1280USB, at first look it is a extraordinary unique pice of electronic board, I will going to start my project now.
    Thank you so much.
    Regards
    Italo

    ReplyDelete