Motor Mount and Wheel Kit

tslator

On the encoder that comes with the kit there are two 3-pin connectors. Are they the same? Is the output just duplicated on both connectors? The reason I ask is that after calibration I see that one week had no encoder ticks. I switched to the connector and I now get encoder ticks. I just want to make sure this is a reasonable thing to do or should I replace the entire encoder pcb? Any information would be helpful. Thanks.

Duane Degn

I don't think tslator is talking about the Activity Bot.

The Motor Mount and Wheel kit does indeed have two 3-pin connectors. The power and ground pins are duplicated on these pins. The output from the encoder is not. The output is two channel quadrature.

Quadrature encoders are very useful with robotics. They can ensure a wheel moving back and forth isn't mistaken for movement in one direction.

There are 36 slots in the encoder disk. This produces 144 transitions when used as a quadrature encoder. You can get pretty precise control from these encoders. Here's the robot I made using this hardware.

http://www.robotrebels.org/index.php?topic=166.0

tslator

Thanks for the response Duane. I'm working with Arlobot h/w. In the forums on connecting Arlobot (see attached) a single encoder connector from each wheel is connected to the Activity board. Given that the diagram uses only one connector, does it matter which encoder connector is used? Also, if I'm using only one connector from each encoder, does it matter which connector I use? For example, if I use connector 1 on encoder 1, do I also need to use connector 1 on encoder 2 and vice versa? At the moment, I don't see any problems since moving over to the other connector port. Both wheel move the requested distance.

Duane Degn

tslator wrote: »

Given that the diagram uses only one connector, does it matter which encoder connector is used?

No, they'll both work the same.

I hope you keep us updated with your progress.