Homebuilt ROVs Forum

You were asking about numbers of motor controls:

I need the following motor controls:

-Left thruster
-Right thruster
-Up/down thruster
-Side thruster
-Claw up/down
-Claw rotate
-Claw open/close

I need the following on/off functions
-Ballast pump forward
-Ballast pump reverse
-Solenoid 1 for ballast system
-Solenoid 2 for ballast system
-Light 1
-Light 2

I would also like the following inputs.
- 4 for compas Dinsmore 1490
- 1 to 4 for water detector.

Is this possible with the Arduinos system?

there is no reason an arduino couldn't do all that. you may need a mega due to all the i/o's, but it is certainly possible.

This is a great idea! If you are looking for a topside application, I've written one that supports 3, 4 and 6 motor layouts. It's open source, so feel free to use it and modify it as you like. I wrote it specifically to interface with Arduinos over ethernet (using UDP).

If you'd like, you can check it out here: code.google.com/p/rov-suite/

You may find it useful.

Thanks!

Chris K

that was why I had asked you about an arduino port...

I'm starting with this sucker:

http://www.controlanything.com/Relay/De ... 0PROXR-NET

They're about to release their new Web-I controllers soon, but this one ticks my boxes currently.

I have been reading the introduction to Arduino book. A very interesting piece of equipment that I'm looking forward to test when I get home.

Do anyone know if it is possible to connect two bords together with either lan cable or just two wires?

I was thinking to use this for control system for my ROV without use of a computer.

One board onbord and one in the surface controlbox.

You can have two boards communicating via a serial connection using the tx and rx ports. The Uno has one pair of tx/rx ports, and I know the Mega has several.

if you just want to use 2 wires for communication, then serial is the way to go. ethernet will require 2 pairs (4 wires total).

the unos, deci, etc boards have 1 hardware serial port, but with the softwareserial code you can have a couple of more, but only at slower speeds. the hardware serial ports can run pretty fast (1+ mbps).

the megas have 4 hw serial ports.

Also, two Arduinos should be able to communicate over UDP using Ethernet shields, if that is what you're interested in, without the need for a computer in between them. That should (correct me if I'm wrong) let you use a longer tether than serial.

Chris K

I've used these off the shelf PCBs to good effect before.

http://www.weedtech.com/

If you can send a command over RS232 from any type of software environment you can use these boards.

Martin