Atlas Scientific Hydroponic Barebones Kit w/ FireBeetle Covers - DFRobot DC Motor & Stepper Driver
Posted: Tue Oct 05, 2021 3:30 am
Hey there! I had no idea there were all these people messing around with sensors
and stuff on a forum. So much win! Really excited I thought I was alone with all this.
I got this Atlas Scientific kit, with 2 PH and 1 EC sensors:
https://atlas-scientific.com/kits/bb-wi-fi-hkit/
I managed to pretty easily get the sensors working and write my own sketch...
even got calibration working no problems!
Then I got this little bad boy motor control board
https://wiki.dfrobot.com/FireBeetle_Cov ... KU_DFR0508
I was able to run the example sketch for this no issues...
Ok so to the meat and potatoes...
When I combine the code for both the motors don't work properly.
It seems to get stuck when the sketch sends the i2c command(s) to the motor board's
ST8 chip to "start the motor hardware" whatever the f that means. This motor1.init()
command I'm talking about is usually put into void setup()... kinda run once in the
sketch to "turn on" the motors.
Since the motor board has an ST8 chip, it's kind of like a small arduino-type device in itself.
Which I guess means it has it's own "sketch" as it were on it.... which I have no access
to because I'm not an employee of DFRobot.
Here's what I tried:
- Disabled each EZO sensor one by one, found that only the EC sensor is causing the issue with the motors.
- Moved the pump initialization command out of the setup loop and into a function, complete with shutdown commands after pump turns off. That helped, and even got me to an almost working system.
- Tried adding in an i2c bus clear function, have zero idea if it had any hope of working but it didn't seem to do anything,
- I tried to reorder the logic in my code until it worked better and better but eventually I couldn't get it to reliably turn on and off repeatedly.
I think, the next thing to try is to make a copy of the motor.init(); command from the DFRobot motor library into my sketch and modify it until I can find a combination of something that works.
and stuff on a forum. So much win! Really excited I thought I was alone with all this.
I got this Atlas Scientific kit, with 2 PH and 1 EC sensors:
https://atlas-scientific.com/kits/bb-wi-fi-hkit/
I managed to pretty easily get the sensors working and write my own sketch...
even got calibration working no problems!
Then I got this little bad boy motor control board
https://wiki.dfrobot.com/FireBeetle_Cov ... KU_DFR0508
I was able to run the example sketch for this no issues...
Ok so to the meat and potatoes...
When I combine the code for both the motors don't work properly.
It seems to get stuck when the sketch sends the i2c command(s) to the motor board's
ST8 chip to "start the motor hardware" whatever the f that means. This motor1.init()
command I'm talking about is usually put into void setup()... kinda run once in the
sketch to "turn on" the motors.
Since the motor board has an ST8 chip, it's kind of like a small arduino-type device in itself.
Which I guess means it has it's own "sketch" as it were on it.... which I have no access
to because I'm not an employee of DFRobot.
Here's what I tried:
- Disabled each EZO sensor one by one, found that only the EC sensor is causing the issue with the motors.
- Moved the pump initialization command out of the setup loop and into a function, complete with shutdown commands after pump turns off. That helped, and even got me to an almost working system.
- Tried adding in an i2c bus clear function, have zero idea if it had any hope of working but it didn't seem to do anything,
- I tried to reorder the logic in my code until it worked better and better but eventually I couldn't get it to reliably turn on and off repeatedly.
I think, the next thing to try is to make a copy of the motor.init(); command from the DFRobot motor library into my sketch and modify it until I can find a combination of something that works.