Control of multiple chained Roboclaws

General discussion of using Roboclaw motor controllers
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therealchrislee
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Joined: Tue Mar 26, 2019 6:44 am
Control of multiple chained Roboclaws

Post by therealchrislee »

I have 8 motors with encoders and home switches, and 4 roboclaw 2x15 boards, and I need to control them all from a single source, preferably a RasPi or similar.

How do I need to wire these for control (assuming USB/packet serial and the S1 S2 lines)?

I've seen Python libraries here and on GitHub. Are those able to take advantage of multiple chained controller boards?
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Basicmicro Support
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Joined: Thu Feb 26, 2015 9:45 pm
Re: Control of multiple chained Roboclaws

Post by Basicmicro Support »

1. You need to change the addresses on each Roboclaw so they are not the same. They default to address 128.
2. Set multi-unit mode checkbox on all controllers.
3. Set all units to the same baudrate. I recommend 115200
4. Wire all S1 pins together and connect to the RPi TX pin.
5. Connect all S2 pins toghether and connect to the RPi RX pin.
6. Add a Pull-up resister from the RX pin to 3.3v on the RPi. anything from 1k to 4.7k should be fine.

Yes, the python library supports multiple roboclaws. That is what the address argument is for.
therealchrislee
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Re: Control of multiple chained Roboclaws

Post by therealchrislee »

Excellent. Just what I was hoping to hear.
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Basicmicro Support
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Re: Control of multiple chained Roboclaws

Post by Basicmicro Support »

Remeber to write the settings to the Roboclaws non-volatile memory(Device menu/Write Settings) otherwise you will lose them when you power off.
Basicmicro Tech
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Re: Control of multiple chained Roboclaws

Post by Basicmicro Tech »

We have a tutorial on using multiple RoboClaws in packet serial mode with a Raspberry Pi. Here is a link to the article: https://www.basicmicro.com/Packet-Seria ... _b_33.html

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