prototyping speed controller
 

What do you use for an off bot prototyping speed controller?
Something you can just hook up to a battery and motor and manually adjust speed.
Thanks

Re: prototyping speed controller
 

I took an old drill of ours, and we wired it to hook up to a battery and the other end to an Anderson connector for our motors. The drill has a variable switch, so we can adjust the speed of the motor and safely hook up a battery. It cost us nothing since we had all the parts around the shop and the drill bit the dust last year.

Re: prototyping speed controller
 

I just bought a couple of these from Amazon. Looks like they are non revering though.

We also use surplus jags (are there any other kind) with a andymark thrifty throttle. The Jags have the advantage of having a 5 volt output to power the thrifty throttle.

Re: prototyping speed controller
 

We traditionally have used Talon SRs with an Arduino giving PWM, but we may switch to SPARKS since those will be our motor controller for the bot. (and we put fans on all of our Talons, and we'd rather not deal with those)

Re: prototyping speed controller
 

When you get these and have a chance to try them, would you please post your findings?

e.g. What is the resolution of the potentiometer (step size of change in output voltage)

and

How stable is the output voltage?

Stuff like that.

Thanks.

[EDIT] OBTW, I like this one better. It has 4 "power tubes" !! ... Reminds me of my youth :-)

Re: prototyping speed controller
 

I recently made a tiny box that contained two talon sr's and used an arduino to provide pwm input. Used a potentiometer and a flip button to control the speed and direction of the output.