Vibrating motors?

Hey all,

I finally have some time to sit down and try to work on my sim. I'm using 25:1 gearbox motors connected to a Sabertooth 2x32 and an arduino Uno. I've been following this tutorial (https://www.xsimulator.net/communit...ial-pid-motor-driver-sketch-w-softstart.9277/) and have been stuck on step 16. With those settings, I cannot turn the motor on. However, if I change the settings to the ones in the photo lower in that document, The motor turns on, but vibrates. If I let the pot rotate freely with the motor shaft it creates a smooth sweep of about 120-180 degrees and then returns to start, and will repeat this. If I hold the pot the motor vibrates back and forth and then stops. The blue/green lines in SMC3 also are not approaching each other, but the green line is oscillating rapidly back and forth from the top of the graph to the bottom. Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Thank you

Okay, so the 2 settings in SMC3 I have tried are the settings the guide recommends and the settings shown in the photo he attached below. SMC3 (top photo) is the photo in the guide, and SMC3(2) (bottom photo) is the recommended settings. With the top photo I can get the motors to vibrate and if I let the pot spin it will turn approximately 180 degrees before rotating back, but the other motor just vibrates (pot doesn't spin). If I hold the pot it will vibrate.

Hey noorbeast,

Thanks a ton for the reply! I can't see the image attached on either my phone or computer. Could you try eithef describing or linking me to it?
Thanks a ton!

Also, how would I make sure the pots are properly centered?

Thank you!

There us a potentiometer line in the SMC3 Utilities application. If I remember correctly, it is the green line. You need to disconnect the pot and turn it by hand until the pot line is in the center of the curve diagram. It must not lie outside the red lines.

Then you definitely need to start with all the values set to Zero, as it is described in the tutorial. Do not start with the other values (e.g. Kp = 500). Tha will not work and is also not recommended in the tutorial. In the tutorial, this screenshot is just meant for explaining all the values.

After centering the pot and connecting it again to the motor, go on with step 17. After following all the steps, you should at least have a basic initial setting that works, so that you can continue with the fine tuning.

Markus Thank you so much! I was able to get it set up! I am now working on trying to get the simtools game engine to work with the motors and will search through here to try to find some information on that. Thank you so much for all the feedback and help!

once i had an issue like that and the problem was a cheap bad potentiometer, when i changed them for a good quality (more expensive ones) they worked just fine

fer