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hooking bs2 up to motor controller — Parallax Forums

hooking bs2 up to motor controller

raulduke1011raulduke1011 Posts: 17
edited 2008-04-16 15:30 in Robotics
I recently purchased a "Sabertooth 2X10 R/C Regenerative Dual Channel
Motor Controller Part #DE-06" and "Gear Head Motor - 12vdc 30:1 253rpm
(6mm shaft) PN #GHM-12". When trying to hook these up to my Parallax
Board of Education with a BS2 and a 7.2V 3000mah Venom battery pack, I
was not successful and even caused some smoke which is leading me to
believe that I may have fried something on the sabertooth(The status
light turns on green but only when I connect the 0V and 5V to the
microcontroller board). I believe the root of my problem was in the
connecting of the 0V, 5V, S1, and S2 chords. There were 3 sets of
yellow/red/black wires here and I thought that it would be as simple
as plugging the S1 set into the P1,VDD,VSS slots on my board but I had
no luck. I am not able to find any specific documentation on hooking
up a motor controller to my microcontroller so I pretty much relied on
a combination of the step 20 in the track chassis doc and the 2x10 docs
from dimension engineering. I'm prepared to bite the bullet and assume
that I just threw away 70.00 on the motor controler and buy a new
one(Sabertooth 2X5 Regenerative Dual Channel Motor Controller) along
with the Track Chassis but would just like some kind of support to
assure that I'm prepared to hook these up correctly. Below is my
current plan. Can you let me know if this looks correct or if there is
something that needs to be changed? Any assistance would be greatly
appreciated as I really feel that my progress is stalling at this
point.

(Sabertooth 2X5 Regenerative Dual Channel Motor Controller)
M1A -> Robot's left motor, yellow wire
M1B -> Robot's left motor, red wire
M2A -> Robot's right motor, red wire
M2B -> Robot's right motor, yellow wire
B+ -> Battery (+), red wire
B- -> Battery (-), black wire
S1 -> Pin on microcontroller that I will use to send pulses to left motor.
S2 -> Pin on microcontroller that I will use to send pulses to right motor.
0V -> no connection
5V -> no connection

Sabertooth Switch Settings according to Chassis Documentation
1 = off (Independent Control)
2 = off (Disable Exponential)
3 = on (Non-lithium mode)
4 = on (R/C Flip Mode)
5 = on (Enable Auto-Calibrate)
6 = off (Disable Timeout)
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