Mini Driver Board

[sp6281]

Hi there,

I have just built my pi robot with camera. I powered it up initially and the servos reassuringly moved (as I would expect), there was some flashing etc and the system seemed to boot, there was another movement on the servos, and then I could move them with the web interface.

I noticed however that the movement on the motors was really weak. I came back to it today (after having it turned off overnight), and whilst there is a reassuring movement when it is initially powered, the red power light comes on, and that is all, no other flashing lights, and no movements on the web interface.

I tried plugging the board into my laptop, however the USB bridge was the only thing it picked up (I have hooked up arduino boards before on this laptop). My conclusion is that there is something wrong with the board. I checked all my connections in case there was an obvious short, but did not find anything.

One thing I have noticed, initially when I powered up, the servos were being held in position (I could hear the motors holding). But now nothing.

Help!

Kind regards

Sean

[Alan]

Hi Sean,

Welcome to the forums.

Sorry to hear you're having problem with your robot. It sounds like your motors weren't getting power originally. How exactly are you powering your robot. i.e. are you using batteries? If so, rechargeable or non-rechargeable? Or are you using a USB powerbank?

If power is coming from the Pi to the Mini Driver board then the Mini Driver also needs to have batteries connected to its +/- connector and the power switch needs to be set to on (this is a really easy mistake to make if you're not powering from batteries).

Another thing that would be really helpful would be if you could boot the robot, wait 5 to 10 minutes or so and then send me the ontents of the logs.html page.

For the Mini Driver, you can find links to the windows drivers on the product page. You can then program it with the Arduino IDE as described here.

Regards

Alan