Quote:
Originally Posted by philso
FRC is an "Engineering Competition". I know your quadcopter is not for FRC but the same though process apply.
The answers to these questions are not rocket science but to properly address them (and the interactions between these choices) would require more than a few posts on a forum like this. If you were in the Houston area, I could help you out. Otherwise, there may be a hacker/maker space near you with someone who has hands-on experience doing this. If you are feeling adventurous, you might consider reading application notes from MOSFET manufacturers such as Fairchild, Infineon, Vishay and others. If you really want to get into it, there are books such as the one by Mohan that are classics in the power electronics field ( http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/powe...an/1101194755). Unfortunately, quite a bit of the advice you have been given in this thread will likely cause the release of a lot of "magic smoke" and lead you to waste time and money.
Even though I design large motor controllers for industrial applications in my day job, I would still buy a ready made one for a project like yours since it would be very difficult for me to beat the price. You have more than enough challenges to overcome in other areas of your project.
I think these are the ones that several of my co-workers use for their electric airplanes and helicopter. |
I will more-or-less have to agree with you in many ways and disagree in a few ways. The fact that you mentioned, that you need to go by the same engineering process as in FRC is nothing but correct! Ryan, you may want to skim through
this. However, where you said that a lot of stuff we told Ryan wouldn't cause magic smoke to appear, if done right. And yes, this ISN'T rocket science (though that is just an exaggeration because rocket science isn't as hard as developing a nuclear reactor)
. Also, what is this company you work in? I am designing a microcar, and I am having a difficult time in finding a good speed controller that is a lot more advanced than those crappy DIY ones available! Everything will be controlled by MCUs, like the QC we are talking about!
Ryan, after you build this with Arduino, I'd like to see you post a video of it, and for a challenge, you should place an RPI doing vision tracking to automate this QC!
Goog luck!