Arduino for control system.

Anything to do with programing the Arduino Platform.
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Geomaracon
Posts: 7
Joined: Nov 18th, 2014, 11:25 am

Arduino for control system.

Post by Geomaracon »

Hi Guys,

I'm looking to use an Arduino based control system for my upcoming ROV. It's a funny situation, I work as a marine geophysicist for a small company and because I tend to do alot of the technical work myself on sidescans and sub bottom profilers my boss decided to have me build an rov.

'Can't be that hard' he says!! I have a basic layout in mind and I'm proposing to use some adapted bilge pump motors for my propulsion and steering. Camera and lighting systems are all set as I do quite alot with these systems.

My main issue is that I know NOTHING about Arduino or programming. I'm fairly sure I could pick it up quickly but I need somewhere to start.

I want to control the four thrusters, maybe five including ascent/descent. I also would like to have reverse functions included. This isn't paramount to what I want but it would be nice and would mean that I would not have to waste my motors capabilities in strange layouts on board the rov! Ultimately a nice joystick setup would be great too!

So, if anyone here has some tips for me re. arduino and its functionality in relation to my required setup it would be fantastic!!

Cheers
rossrov
Posts: 383
Joined: Feb 28th, 2013, 5:01 pm
Location: Australia

Re: Arduino for control system.

Post by rossrov »

Hi Geomaracon. Because your camera is already working on it's own, then a couple of Arduinos communicating via their own cable should be fairly straightforward. One Arduino would be topside. This reads joystick voltages and sends these values as serial data down the cable. That's all. This link shows how to do this: http://www.arduino.cc/en/Tutorial/JoyStick

The second Arduino is in the ROV and converts the serial data to PWM signals for a motor speed controller to use. Similar to this: http://playground.arduino.cc/Learning/S ... rvoExample As you have a joystick and Arduino topside, you can ignore the Processing code further down the page. Hobby servos and motor speed controllers can be treated the same. Make sure your speed controllers can do reverse

After you've got the two-axis joystick and the single servo/motor working, and have an understanding of how the code is doing this, you can edit the code and copy and paste etc to do an extra joystick and more motors.

Hope that helps.

Ross
Geomaracon
Posts: 7
Joined: Nov 18th, 2014, 11:25 am

Re: Arduino for control system.

Post by Geomaracon »

Thanks for the reply. Hope to get started once all equipment arrives!
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