Custom Motor Controller

Creating a custom brushed dc motor controller was one of my first PCB projects that made it all the way to an actual board house. This was a project that can from the need of cheap easy to use motor controllers for battlebots. This would provide the WPI Combat Robotics club with easy to use, compact, high current, and cheap controllers.

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Version 1.0

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Below is the first version using an atmega 328PB QFP32 package for the logic and an TC4469OE to drive the h-bridge. This proved to be a decent first try but a lot of improvements could be made.

All components were hand soldered, the board shown above hasn't had the flux cleaned off out it.

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Version 2 (WIP)

A new version based off the same micro on h-bridge driver was designed to fix some routing issues and feedback issues from the driver. High current traces have mask removed to allow solder to be added to improve current carrying capability.

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Improvements could be made by replacing the linear regulator with a switching one. Additionally more isolation between h-bridge and micro should be made. Reverse input protection would be a great benefit considering other combat robotics teams have broken multiple expensive controllers due to accidental reverse input.

Future versions of the board will incorporate these improvements and ones that have already been implemented in FRC motor controllers, like direction limit switches and brake/coast modes.