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Unread 24-12-2007, 05:27
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Re: How do you sync multiple motors?

Quote:
Originally Posted by M. Krass View Post
Can you please clarify what you're trying to achieve? Particularly, in my mind, your description of "each side" is ambiguous and I'm not sure if you're trying to make the right and left side of your drive train go forward at the same speed or if you're combining two motors on one side and trying to ensure those motors turn at the same speed.
Ok, to clarify...
We have two motors on the right side of the robot and two motors on the left side of the robot. This is a 4 wheel robot and each of the four wheels is driven by it's own motor.

First we would like to make sure that the wheels on each side are operating at the same speed. We have seen that even though both motors operate from the same PWM values, each motor tends to have unique characteristics and can operate at slightly different speeds. This can cause slight binding when both wheels on one side of the robot are not "in sync" speed wise.
We have calibrated the victors to our joysticks and this has helped tremendously.

Second, we would like to ensure that both sides operate at as close to the same speed as possible so that the operator doesn't have to compensate much with relative joystick positioning to make the robot track straight and true...

Hope that the above description is not too ambiguous...

thanks