Bots/BeagleY-AI and Pololu

General Discussion
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Hey There,

I have found a “new” liking towards bots. I have had these Pololu motor drivers for over 10 years without any motive to make them work.

  • Now, Pololu has directed me to use updated motor drivers and firmware to those drivers.
  • As is for now, I am not going to afford to purchase the new motor drivers.
  • But, I will be making a small post on RC, USB, and the BeagleY-AI.

I know it is just USB for now. I have not set up the UART channels in the DTS for the BeagleY-AI.

With that in mind, I think I can do it. It seems that they, Pololu personnel, posted a good manual for these older motor drivers back in 2012. I am just rehashing what others may already know or have attempted in the 13 years since the “newer” firmware for these motor drivers.

Okay. With that all typed out and in the public eye, I am also making some makeshift bot dedicated to the drivers, the BeagleY-AI, and it will be 3D Printed using Alibre Atom3D and a local 3D Printer.

I will have to dig in my onslaught of items to find exactly where the 9v battery terminals are located, e.g. I have not seen them for over eight years. In hindsight, I could have used other drivers like the Capes I had produced for the TI drivers that I could not get the correct data in tuned to work with the source code. That is not a lost effort. It will just take time. Slow mo’ over here…

…

I saw some nifty things while looking around on the web and I am not going to afford to get them as of now. I will wait until later.

Seth

P.S. Oh! I saw a new Demo on the docs. pages under the BeagleY-AI header with matching 3D Printed part(s). The 3D Printed part is so nice in the photo, I thought it was casted. Anyway, up, up, and away. I will work on this small subscript to the entirety of these docs. and add a post or two to Hackster.io .

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Also…this may sound silly. Here goes it!

I have these older motor drivers called DM332T from omc-stepperonline.com .

Anyway, I was told they would work with 3.3v logic. Well, sort of. Not really. There is a part to the set up that requires a 5v input from somewhere…

Also, the docs on these stepper motor drivers also say two, count ‘em, two GPIO pins and things just work. Here is my inquiry.

Does a PWM peripheral on the BeagleY-AI become of any use when I use one of two GPIO pins from the headers on the BeagleY-AI?

The reason I am asking is because:

  1. I used to believe things.
  2. These things I used to believe have vanished in time with my current type of research.
  3. One PWM and one GPIO used to make my motors turn on various motor drivers and all while in tandem.

Does one PWM pin and one GPIO pin still constitute for a working motor driver?

Seth

P.S. Any and all entries to my inquiry are welcome. I will read and proceed.