ammeter sensor

VEX V5 General Discussion New Product Ideas
1

Issue: To the best of my understanding, there’s no good way for software loaded to the microcontroller to read the load on a motor. (Note. I’m not sure this is true with the Vex Pro, but I believe it to be true with the other microcontrollers.)

By creating a small ammeter and using it to measure the load on a 6" motor/servo extension cable and sending that information back through a sensor input, teams could measure motor load during testing (allowing them to improve their designs by “rightsizing” the number of motors or adjusting gearing). This could also be used by the microcontroller to make decisions based off of motor feedback. (Detecting a load on a servo arm, changing gearing by sliding an axle using a servo, etc.)

If that information is already available to the microcontroller, you have my apologies. I simply couldn’t find a reference to it.

2

We used a current sensor on our FRC robot this year in order to implement traction control. Very useful as DC motor torque is directly proportional to current (at a given voltage, of course.)

There are many small (5A) current sensors available at digikey, but the ones I found are all surface mount devices. It should be fairly easy (for someone with Surface Mount experience) to mount one on a circuit board as part of a servo (VEX motor) extension cable to the motor and have an output off the current sensor lead back to an analog input on the VEX controller.

I could see these being fairly inexpensive sensors to manufacture.

Jason