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Devo 8: adding a vibration motor
- rbe2012
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Looking at the hardware connections of Devo10 (in the "Articles" section) told me that pin PD2 is used as output. Devo8 does not make use of this pin and I have found nothing connected to it on the board. So I decided to give it a try.
First I wanted to use a simple driver-ic (uln2003) to avoid damage to the mcu when I do something silly. This ic has 7 lines so why not using it for more than PD2? So I looked for some more free gpio pins and found a lot, selecting 7 of them.
Soldering wires to the pins was quite difficult because they are very small (about 0,25mm wide) and there is not many space between them. But with good equipment and a stable hand I got it.
The driver ic gives enough power for a tiny motor. I looked for a little one in my boxes and found a servo where the electronic was dead. The motor seemed to be ideal - small, not much current, working with less than 5V... Cutting a peace of wood, drilling a hole far outside the center and placing it at the motor axis was easy. I simply fastened it with tape at the handhold and tried it directy with the battery - works good, sufficient vibrations to feel them good. Later I will build another weight (surely metal) and place it inside the tx but for now it is good.
Then I soldered the wires correctly (placed a plug in the battery case because I did not want to drill visible holes in the tx case only for testing) - one wire to the output of the driver, the other to VDD (got VDD and GND from an additional header I soldered in the free holes on the left side).
The changes I had to make in the software were really easy: I only had to set the value for "#define HAS_VIBRATING_MOTOR 0" to "1" in target/devo8/target_defs.h. Then opening the tx.ini-file and setting "vibration=1" and I was done!
I have written some easy code to be able to switch vibration off and on without onpening the tx.ini file. I can post it if anybody needs it.
It should work in a similar way in Devo12 but the PD2-pin is used there. So some changes in the code have to be made, but nothing difficult.
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- rbe2012
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I don't know why but I can not attach the .patch-file.
I try a .zip:
And here the full files, also as .zip:
Attachment emu_devo8.exe.zip not found
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- Mullson
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- rbe2012
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- syphear
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I have not had very much to do with electronics such as the innards of a devo8 radio so this may sound noobish.
I gather the MCU is the chip you soldered your single core copper wires to.
Is the output of this chip a voltage that could directly run a tiny vibrating motor like something that's found in a mobile phone or do you need a driver-ic to provide enough power?
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- rbe2012
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The MCU can drive some load (I have looked into the data sheet but I could not find anything about this so I assume the power is quite low). So you will have to place an driver ic or an transistor as amplifier in between - if not you risk to burn the MCU...
I have tested a vibrating motor from a LG phone but the vibrations were too small (the tx is relatively heavy compared to a cell phone) and it was not really remarkable. So I took a motor from a burned servo and soldered some weight to the brass gear.
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- syphear
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I have a small vibrating motor that's on my Hobbyking 720P wingcam that doesn't need to be there so I might use it.
What would you use the other connections for that you soldered to the driver-ic?
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- rbe2012
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Soldering was really not easy, but when I knew how to solder the first wire the rest was much easier (using a magnifier an a really spiky solder tip and being economical with the solder made it possible).
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- RandMental
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rbe2012 wrote: Soldering was really not easy, but when I knew how to solder the first wire the rest was much easier (using a magnifier an a really spiky solder tip and being economical with the solder made it possible).
If I can give some advice on precision soldering as is required here - the trick here, and with SMD soldering in general, is to use the solder's capillary effect to limit itself to the pin/pad to be soldered, and not flow all over the place. This is one function of solder paste and the resin inside wire solder.
Thus for these fine pitch soldering, put some solder paste on the pin to be soldered and don't rely only on the resin inside the solder wire. Even better, pre-tin the wire properly and you might not even need additional solder, just heat the wire in place on the pin.
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- -=Hubi-Dirk=-
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- rbe2012
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The zip-file is placed in the build-section ( see here ).
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- -=Hubi-Dirk=-
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- domcars0
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[EDIT] Photo removed, read the next post ....
Devo 10 (+7e) owner. It's mine, please don't touch it with your big fingers
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- -=Hubi-Dirk=-
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- domcars0
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Devo 10 (+7e) owner. It's mine, please don't touch it with your big fingers
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- saidem
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I would pass my devo tx 8S with deviation and put in a few months the vibrator, can you tell me what versions I have to take?
In advance thanks
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- mabxhrc
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Thank you.
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- saidem
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- mabxhrc
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Ok, so, would you please describe what need to be made to activate this feature? I need do edit some kind of file?
Cheers!
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- mwm
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Do not ask me questions via PM. Ask in the forums, where I'll answer if I can.
My remotely piloted vehicle ("drone") is a yacht.
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