Endbots DESC (Dual RC ESC)

The production boards are complete and they are available for sale now. Everything works great as it should.

I am ordering boards for what will be the production version. I will be selling these soon. Everything is coming together.

My software is now complete. I eliminated the last pesky bug. I am going to make one final board revision before I am ready to launch my kickstarter. I also have to do some destructive testing.

I attended Circ bot brawl with my robot "Death by 1001 cuts" my 2 time champion robot. I swapped the electronics I was using for my new board. I had no issues during the event with my motor controller and it was well received by the other competitors. The competition was fierce this year and I was lucky to secure 3rd place out of 16 robots. I am still working on the code for the controller and I will be launching a kickstarter when I am completely happy with it.

My board is fully functional. Everything works as intended except one thing. There is one small bug that I have been unable to track down. When the motors are Idle they make noise, but when I shut off the radio and the board enters failsafe the motors are dead quiet. I am not really sure what is happening. I am currently running the board using 8mhz internal clock, the problem gets worse with lower frequency. I may make another board revision that has an external resonator to see if increasing the clock speed helps. I am also still experimenting with the code hoping I can find a software solution to this bug.

Still working on my calibration routine. I got the code mostly sorted out I should have it working later tonight. I installed my board into one of my new robots, this one is a wedge that will serve as a platform for testing code. I will likely enter it at CIRC as well.

Now that I have the hardware finalized I am focusing my effort on improving the software.

I am able to interpret signals from the receiver and move the motors however my calibration routine is somewhat lacking. Right now I have it saving the highest and lowest values of each channel as you rotate the stick around. This means that when you first turn on the unit the motors move unpredictably. I am working on a subroutine to store these values into the EEPROM and load them each time the unit powers on. I am going to finish writing my calibration mode so that when a set of pads is shorted the led will blink and record the highest and the lowest values for each channel (you spin the stick in a circle) then when you short the pin again it will record these values into the EEPROM memory.

Once this is done the boards will be ready for testing. I plan on using these in my robots for CIRC 2016 which will be held August 13th my robot "Death by 1001 Cuts" is already registered I may be bringing another robot that will also use my motor drivers if I get it finished in time.

If you happen to be in southern Illinois you should come check it out.

http://www.buildersdb.com/view_bots.asp?eventid=431

I poulated 2 boards and soldered them. Both burned bootloaders and a blink program. now i need to update my code a bit and make another test platform.

I got my new boards in and they look pretty good except for one glaring error. I accidentally included the via's in the soldermask layer so there is a bunch of exposed copper on the top and bottom of the board. I think it will still be okay but I ordered a soldermask pen so I can cover it up before I populate the board.

I am also still waiting on a couple of components and the solder paste stencil. I already fixed the file and once I complete another round of testing I will be ordering what I hope to be the final board revision before my production version.

I plan on doing some destructive testing with these boards to see exactly how much abuse they can take and what kills them. look forward to some interesting videos from us soon.

I have a working prototype. The 5 volt regulator turned out to be a little too small (I had to dead bug a larger regulator onto it) so I have revised the board to include a larger regulator.

I am hopeful that this will be the last revision before the production edition.