• More power

    davedarko • 06/25/2021 at 11:57 • 0 comments

    found a good resource for more info on basically any regulator / converter board out there, while looking for info on the Mini360 board.

    https://www.matts-electronics.com/dcdc-converters/

  • Motors

    davedarko • 06/21/2021 at 14:21 • 2 comments

    I have modified regular nylon servos and noticed that the variable resistor from many tutorials have changed from an insert knob to a fixed metal knob. You have to drill into the gears with a 1.5mm drill and now the gear has too much play and the gears block because of the play the gears grind at each other in an angle. So the sensible idea here was to make little M1.5 spacers / washer from LED / resistor legs.

    This is not something you want to repeat for all the servos of your robot army! So just buy continuous servos and be happy that you saved an hour by paying a dollar more!

    Since the knob rod is fixed, it's tough to even remove the resistor from the controller - so I just soldered directly to the motor and ended up with a geared 6V motor. You can buy these on your own, too! Look for 6V N20 motors. 

  • some specs

    davedarko • 06/21/2021 at 14:11 • 4 comments

    The ESP32 cam board features an ASM1117-3.3V regulator. This regulator allows for 12V input voltage, but also has a dropout voltage of 1V. With only one cell this would technically not even work, as the 3.3V + 1V means we're already above 4.2V of the charged cell. The ASM1117 works well with 5V though, so boosting the voltage might seem feasible.

    http://www.advanced-monolithic.com/pdf/ds1117.pdf [PDF]

    Let's just say you want 600mA from the 5V source you've just boosted, or 3W. With a charged battery (4.2V) and let's say a perfect, lossless converter you would draw current at 712mA. Looking at a voltage of 3.2V this would mean pulling 938mA.

    With two or four servos/motors (stall current needs to be measured), an LED that takes 130mA and an ESP32 with Camera coming in at 180mA - this setup can brownout quickly.

    With two cells I hope to be able to power the servos at 6V. I want to later verify, that a 2s cell at 450mAh should hold up longer than a single cell battery at 900mAh.