Here is yet another new product announcement! In the same line as the new pi3hat, here is a new minor revision of the power_dist, the r4.5b:
The changes are largely the same as for the new pi3hat:
The input voltage range is extended from 10-44V, to 10-54V [EDIT 2024-05-24: derated back to 44V].
The CAN-FD port has +-58V bus fault protection, up from +-12V.
Additionally, the measurement noise of the output current has been improved from 300mA to approximately 30mA.
Implied by my previous writeup on pin selection for external connectors, we’ve got a new variant of the moteus controller to announce today in beta form, the moteus-n1!
This variant is intended to be more feature-full, higher performance (and higher cost). Here are some bullet points of the biggest differentiators with r4.11:
| moteus n1 | moteus r4.11 | |
|---|---|---|
| Price | $159 USD @ qty 1 | $104 USD @ qty 1 |
| Size | As small as 46mmx46mmx8mm with optional back connectors omitted. 58% of the volume, 87% of the top down footprint size of r4.11 | 53x46x12mm |
| External Peripherals | Each of the auxiliary connectors supports SPI, UART, ADC, SW & HW Quadrature, Hall sensors, and I2C. 5V and 3.3V is provided on each connector to power peripherals (100mA for each voltage available combined between both connectors). I2C pullups are configurable on each connector. All 4 pins on AUX2 are 5VT, the two non-SPI pins on AUX1 are 5VT. | ENC (AUX1) supports SPI, Hall and ADC. ABS (AUX2) supports UART and I2C and are both 5VT. |
| RS422 | Built in RS422 transceiver for communicating with RS422 / BiSS-C encoders (BiSS-C / SSI not yet supported in software). | None |
| Voltage | 8-54V, 48V nominal | 8-44V |
| Peak Output | 100A output phase current, 1200W | 100A output phase current, 500W |
| Continuous Output | 9A output phase current ambient, 18A w/ thermal management | 11A output phase current ambient, 22A w/ thermal management |
| CAN fault tolerance | 58V bus fault tolerance | 12V bus fault tolerance |
| Power Connectors | Solder pads for DC bus input, one always present XT30, one optional XT30 | 2x XT30 |
The short form is that the n1 does not really expand the set of motors that can be usefully driven, but does enable operation in 48V systems, is more compact and electrically robust and provides significantly improved external peripheral support.
I’m excited to announce a minor upgrade to the mjbots pi3hat product line, the pi3hat r4.5!
This has a few upgrades over the old r4.4b:
The input voltage range is expanded from 8-44V to 8-54V.
All CAN-FD ports have +-58V bus fault protection, up from +-12V.
0.1" pin headers are present for the Raspberry Pi I2C, UART, and for 3.3V and 5V outputs
Check it out at mjbots.com today!
Partly to celebrate moteus controllers being back in stock and partly because a lot of important work has backed up, we’ve just released a new firmware version for moteus (2023-02-01) that has a little bit of something for everyone. Future posts will examine some of these features in more detail, but for now you just get the bullet list:
Support sending and receiving arbitrary data from a UART configured on either of the auxiliary ports
It has been on github for a few days now, but I’m excited to announce the newest moteus firmware release, 2022-07-11. This release includes some big features, and some quality of life improvements all around.
This is an exciting time for moteus, and the new features will keep coming!
I’ve posted a new release of the firmware for the moteus brushless controller to github!
This release has a number of minor improvements in the host tools (for which there continue to be no distributed binaries, you get to build from source). The biggest improvement in the firmware is the improved low-torque operation as documented here and here. If you have any questions or want help upgrading, hop into discord at #moteus and ask!
