We just received a new shipment of motors in for our Traxster robot kits, and I wanted to put a few notes on the forum about them:
They are much higher quality than the previous motors, are much more quiet (due to more precise gearing), and have built in quadrature encoders on them.
The specs are:
NOTE: For those customers who are using a CMUcam2/2+ Pan/Tilt turret or an IR Panner with their Traxster, you will have to remove the black plastic encoder cover for the motors to fit.
On another note, I measured the current draw between the old motors and the new ones, and found some interesting results. The old motors were very noisy, and top speed varied between the motors (due to frictional differences - imposed by manufacturing). The new motors are very quiet, precise, and top speed seems very consistent. So, once I measured the current draw between the two (almost identical) motors, the old motor were pulling about 750 mA at no-load top speed, while the new motors pulled around 300mA no-load top speed. Wow!
Traxsters will now come with the quadrature wheel encoders on the motors, so there won't be any need to purchase the optical encoder modules for the Traxster going forward. We will continue supply the optical encoder modules, however.
The PID values will change for the Traxster (since the quad encoders have a higher resolution), and we will post those values in a few days.
Here are some pictures of the new motors, along with how they look when mounted in a Traxster.
The black wire contains four conductors, red, black, white, and green, which are 5V, Gnd, Channel A, Channel B, respectively.
Note how black quadrature encoder wires tuck underneath Serializer, and plug right into the quadrature encoder ports. LoL
NOTE: The encoder wheel/sensor covers have to be (easily) removed for the motors to fit in the Traxster if you have a panning servo bolted in. Since everything is protected by the bottom belly pan, you don't have to worry about the sensors getting damaged w/o the covers.
I finally got the new motors out on the site, by the way (took long enough, eh?). :)
Hey Jay,
I apologize that we weren't available Friday afternoon...We were unloading a 400 pound metal shear/brake off of the truck, and it took several hours. :)
I'll be glad to get you two more motors out on Monday. If you don't mind, please send us some pictures. It's not that I don't trust you, but rather so that we can send them to the motor manufacturer, and ensure that it doesn't happen again. I do apologize that this occurred, and we will make every effort to get the manufacturer to fix this.
Could you please provide a shipping address, and/or order number, and we can get them out to you on Monday morning.
Best Regards!