TinyCross Ultralight Electric Crosskart: First Test Drive and Data Logging #Robotics #Vehicles
We first wrote about Shane Colton’s TinyCross ultralight electric crosskart back on
I’ve been waiting over a year to see if this mountain bike air shock suspension setup would work, and it looks like it does! I haven’t done any tuning on it besides setting the preload, but it handles my pretty beat up parking lot nicely, absorbing bumps that would have broken tinyKart in minutes.
The steering linkage also seems okay, with good travel and minimal bump steer. There are still some minor mechanical improvements I want to make, but it’s nice to see the suspension concept in action after all this time.
And any good vehicle these days gathers data on performance:
One of the early lessons I learned in building motor drives is to always log data. Nothing ever works perfectly on the first try, but having data logging built in from the start is the best way I know of to quickly diagnose problems. A lot of the stuff that happens in a motor drive is faster than typical data logging can capture, but a lot of it is also periodic. By synchronizing the data collected to the rotor electrical angle, its possible to reveal detailed periodic signals even with relatively low frequency (50Hz) logging to an SD card.
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Stop breadboarding and soldering – start making immediately! Adafruit’s Circuit Playground is jam-packed with LEDs, sensors, buttons, alligator clip pads and more. Build projects with Circuit Playground in a few minutes with the drag-and-drop MakeCode programming site, learn computer science using the CS Discoveries class on code.org, jump into CircuitPython to learn Python and hardware together, TinyGO, or even use the Arduino IDE. Circuit Playground Express is the newest and best Circuit Playground board, with support for CircuitPython, MakeCode, and Arduino. It has a powerful processor, 10 NeoPixels, mini speaker, InfraRed receive and transmit, two buttons, a switch, 14 alligator clip pads, and lots of sensors: capacitive touch, IR proximity, temperature, light, motion and sound. A whole wide world of electronics and coding is waiting for you, and it fits in the palm of your hand.
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Python for Microcontrollers — Python on Microcontrollers Newsletter: Pi Day, GitHub 2FA and much more! #CircuitPython #Python #micropython @ThePSF @Raspberry_Pi
