Reliable and Flexible Switching System

[Dog-One]

Yes its a very swish unit! Very professional looking! Thanks for posting!

Gunther likes the Propeller chip for signal generation, but I prefer the PSoC devices for a few reasons:
1. You can do hardware and software design within a single chip.
2. Cypress supports their products really well and has always offered a hand when I get stuck trying to implement a concept.
3. The Cypress design software might look a little overwhelming, but it's really slick to use and is very mature and reliable.  Oh, did I mention it's free too?

With some of the newer boards like the BeagleBone, the capabilities may go well beyond what is needed.  Having a full-blown PC on a credit card board still blows me away.  How accurately these systems can generate signals though...   Someone else will need to chime in.  I've been a little reluctant to get one to test with as I might dump far too many hours into one instead of focusing on the mission at hand.

Bottom line...  Yes, we should all have something that is easy and inexpensive to build or easy to get from someone else that has made a few of them.  The discrete component signal generators of the Stan Meyer days has long past.  On the other hand, one would be nuts to drop 400 dollars on a BK Precision pulse generator with the type of digital electronics we have these days.  A slick little controller on a board with some separate drive breakout boards is clearly the way to go.  Put everything in a handy little enclosure and we're back to focusing on our forum projects.

[EMJunkie]

Doug, I use OrCAD.  Is Eagle the choice around here for low cost?

Hey Guys,

I agree, Eagle seems to be more 'Industry Standard'. I use different software also and am not confident enough to put Eagle Files out there that may have errors or bad practices that I am not yet aware of.

Eagle is Free also: -->Download Eagle<-- with lots of custom Library's.

Eagle does allow a full, one stop from start to finish solution. It can even get quotes for the manufacture of the completed Gerber Files. I am practising Eagle, learning its techniques so in the future I hope to be able to provide more help in this area.

All the Best

  Chris

[EMJunkie]

With some of the newer boards like the BeagleBone, the capabilities may go well beyond what is needed.  Having a full-blown PC on a credit card board still blows me away....

Hey Dog-One,

For Sure! BeagleBone... Its awesome!

In saying that I did find the documentation a little confusing when I purchased mine. Its a 200MHz Clock for the PWM's but the embedded CPU is 1GHz on the Black. I was a little disheartened that this wa snot more clearly documented at the time I purchased. All in all, this is the best board I have purchased for overall wide range of features. FEZ Hydra can also run Linux on the Embeded CPU but its CPU Intensive compared to the BeagleBone.

WOW What a price drop! BeagleBone Black - $45.00 Thus far, this is the best option for price for our project!

Imagine VNC to your Home Power Unit to check stats and do maintenance all on a Credit Card Sized Unit! I guess we already see in in the phone technology so its not that hard to imagine...

Lurkers, Join in! we need to get the best from this thread so let us know your thoughts!

All the Best

  Chris

[MarkE]

Hey Dog-One,

For Sure! BeagleBone... Its awesome!

In saying that I did find the documentation a little confusing when I purchased mine. Its a 200MHz Clock for the PWM's but the embedded CPU is 1GHz on the Black. I was a little disheartened that this wa snot more clearly documented at the time I purchased. All in all, this is the best board I have purchased for overall wide range of features. FEZ Hydra can also run Linux on the Embeded CPU but its CPU Intensive compared to the BeagleBone.

WOW What a price drop! BeagleBone Black - $45.00 Thus far, this is the best option for price for our project!

Imagine VNC to your Home Power Unit to check stats and do maintenance all on a Credit Card Sized Unit! I guess we already see in in the phone technology so its not that hard to imagine...

Lurkers, Join in! we need to get the best from this thread so let us know your thoughts!

All the Best

  Chris

That does look like a nice kit for $45.

[EMJunkie]

@All

This YouTube Video is a GEM! Its very close to what we should be looking at!

URL of what we should be aiming for: -->Dual Motor Controller Cape design for the BeagleBone<-- Instead we need Dual H-Bridge with flexible Frequency and Duty with PLL and other awesome functions! (Most H-Bridge Chips are locked to certain Frequency's or a range and are not quite flexible for our needs) MOST Importantly on top of this, we need to uncouple the channels, E.G: be able to change the Phase between channels on the H-Bridge and make them 0 Degrees to 180 degrees out of phase from each other.

This means we need FETs instead of a dedicated H-Bridge Chip.

This is awesome! An excellent start for something to aim for!

I would really like Paul Tan to join us and advise on his work if he has time!

All the Best

  Chris

P.S: Update on Links: -->Dual Motor Controller MK5 - Cape design for the BeagleBone<-- Also see Paul Tan's Blog: -->Paul Tan's Blog<--

P.P.S: Some more great news: -->Design Files - Paul Tan - GitHub - Dual Motor H-Bridge with dual Quadrature Encoder cape for BeagleBone Black<--