MotorPiTX, by Jason Barnett, was delivered today. It’s a robotics board for the Raspberry Pi, combined with ATX style power supply. It was one of this summer’s successful Kickstarter campaigns. It was either the first or second KS that I’ve backed.
I’m a bit busy this week, but there’s a part of me that’s saying “never mind all that, just get out there and put it together”. I’m not going to do that tonight. I think we’ll have to settle for some kit photos and I’ll let you know how I get on with the kit a bit later when I’ve built it.
If you can’t wait that long, you could always pop on over to Jason’s site and get your own.
Here’s a couple of pics, I’ll add some more tomorrow, when the light’s better for photos…
The full kit including all stretch goal bonuses
Seems an odd choice to design a board specifically for robotics / other battery-powered applications, but then use a linear voltage regulator rather than a more efficient switching voltage regulator?
Looks like quite a neat board though, if robotics is your thing.
And just to nitpick, but it’s an ATX-style (i.e. software-controllable) power supply. An ATX power supply is that big metal box that powers your desktop PC ;)
OK – changed that. But, in the spirit of proper banter, Andrew, ;) I should inform you that I ditched my office desktop PC a couple of weeks ago. But I do have several hacked ATX power supplies around (very useful for powering lipo chargers).
Switching it round, I wonder how many lipo batteries you’d need to use to power an ATX motherboard? ;-D
Oddly enough, I found out once when there was a power cut (in Poland I think) that one of my chargers will back power the ATX supply through the 12 V rail (at least enough to maintain the 5V rail) when charging a 3 cell lipo. That’s not really what you want to happen if the power goes off when you’re charging.
Yikes, more dead batteries through over-discharging?!
I would have thought that battery chargers (unlike cheap USB hubs) always include protection diodes to prevent back-powering?
You’d have thought so. But at least with RC lipos you’re not supposed to charge unattended, so it shouldn’t be a problem.