Just built my first MOTOR CONTROLLER!
 

Hey everyone!

For a long while now I have been hearing about how motor controllers work, but most of it has been over my head.

I'm currently (oh my, the puns...) er right now, I am in a non-credit electronics class. The night before last, I went to the Makerspace and started work on a really simple DC motor controller, to be used as an LED dimmer.

So here it is:
http://300mpg.org/wp-content/uploads...r_DSC_7915.jpg

Yep, that's a motor controller!
12V, 200mA., and not much to look at, but it does work!

Read more at my blog entry:
First DIY Motor Controller

Congrats on making the controller! What's the next step in making it handle more amps?

The final intent of this project is to make an LED dimmer that can handle 6 watts.

It just so happens that a motor controller design will work just fine for the project.

The next step would be to have the output drive a transistor instead of an LED.

The transistor will handle the higher power and do the actual switching.

If I were building a full-scale EV motor controller from scratch, I would just go with the Open Revolt design.

This little project is as much to learn about electronics as anything.

Wooo, pretty cool Ben. I've been tinkering with a few things myself. Electronics are a lot of fun for nerdy guys like us! There is so much cool stuff you can do!

Awesome Ben! Is that a 555 timer?

Yeah, that's a 555 timer.
I had never used one before. When I started talking with the local guys about rigging up some sort of really basic PWM controller, I thought I might need some sort of micro-controller and everyone was like "Nah, just use one of these."

I followed THIS TUTORIAL. except that I replaced the mosphet with a resistor and LED.

I'm still new to all this and most of it is still a foreign language.

It was pretty exciting to hook everything together and make it work though!

This coming Thursday night, I plan on making it control a small motor and a larger array of LEDs. Then I can make a real circuit board and enclosure for it.

This is by no means anything close to an Open ReVolt controller, but I am actually learning things by doing this!

Made it light up an array of LEDs with a MOSFET and also run a small DC motor.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WDe63yr1GDg

I just got the setup to dim a large white LED array (under cabinet light) yesterday.

That light is 1.8 watts. I think the MOSFET is rated for 50 watts.

PWM is basically a square wave - put it through a speaker and you get noise!

I did play a little bit with an audio speaker, varying the pitch. There was another guy there when I was working on it who makes weird electronic musical instruments and noisemakers for fun. He uses all sorts of old-fasioned analog circuits for that.

And when it blows up you will feel like the father of someone that just blew up. It's really quite sad actually.