Archives: Moteus_r45

New product day: moteus heat spreader

The moteus controller is capable of a lot of instantaneous power. However, to fully make use of that power, you’ll need to keep the mosfets cool on the board. moteus has two mechanisms for that:

  1. A heatsink can be mounted to the bottom side of the PCB between the board and the motor. This is most useful when integrated into a servo motor, and the servo housing can be used as a heatsink.
  2. Mounted to the top of the board, attaching to the MOSFETS directly.

In addition to the MOSFETs, the gate driver chip, the DRV8323 can produce large amounts of heat, especially when the controller is run at a higher voltage, like the 44V that the moteus r4.5 supports.

moteus r4.5

Meet the newest revision of the moteus controller!

Yes, it does look mostly the same as the r4.3 that has been getting a lot of use lately. This revision exists mostly to improve manufacturability, but I snuck in a minor design improvement while at it. Now, the maximum voltage input is rated up to 44V from the 34V of the r4.3! (Note though, that the pi3hat and power_dist still are limited to 34V). Otherwise the new controller is fully electrically, mechanically, and software compatible with the r4.3.