Lipo Power Supply for Adeept Mars Rover Picar-B?

1594507930

Greets!

I ordered a Adeept Mars Rover Picar-B and I want to use a 7.4 volt 5000mah battery pack with it. Has anyone does this, will it work? I would prefer to have more sustainable power while experimenting. I thought about building a board that uses my battery pack and also allows for an adapter plug in that will also charge. I can do that, I have done that before.

I understand that I will have to make room for my board and battery pack, I just want to make sure the electronics will be ok with it. I am assuming the included 2 cell 18650 holder is configured in serial mode, yielding 3.7vdc x 2 for 7.4 volts DC.

Any suggestions would be appreciated, thank you!

Hop

1592622389

Support you to do this, as long as the voltage does not exceed 13V and the current is large enough, for we need relatively large current to drive the picar-B motors, and the specific current depends on the load. Thank you.

1594507930

1592622389 replied at 2020-7-20 05:09 PM
Support you to do this, as long as the voltage does not exceed 13V and the current is large enough,  ...

I did what I planned, but I wired the jst XHP connector wrong (note to self... NEVER trust the wire color codes on aftermarket gear) and I believe I fried my motor hat. I ordered another one, and rushed it DHL. I am usually a VERY careful guy but I trusted the wire colors and did not think that the connectors I ordered would be reversed. Sigh.

I emailed a request for a schematic so I can try to fix the hat. If I can, I want to use it in another build. Of course I am praying that there was at least polarity protection on the devices on the board. My connected Pi 4 suffered no damage at all. It has protection on its power rails though.

Using a 2s 7.4 6A Lipo battery pack and it will fit just fine and keep it running a long time. When I get the new hat that is. Live and learn.

Hop

1594507930

So far so good! I popped off the inductor to look at the traces underneath. The middle part of the ground trace from a little before the inductor to the other side towards diode 2 was bare, raised, and broken. I peeled up the bare trace and snipped it on both ends. Then I ran an insulated solid 22awg wire from the switch to the GS2678ZT 5A buck converter power management chip on/off pin (pin 5). I applied power and the leds lit up just fine. I disconnected power and plugged it into the PI 4 and then powered the PI. It booted and then the three leds by the GPIO lit up. Everything seems to be working! YAY!
I am now loading packages so I can test the servos, WS2812 lights, and the drive motor. Then I will truly know if my repaired board is working.

1594507930

Now I am on to the software. OMG what a mess. I tried following the video but right away there were inconsistencies. Setup.py is no longer in the server folder (as shown in the video), in the latest git clone pull. It is one folder higher. After running it, wheel or something like it failed 3 times. The script went back through it several times then finally rebooted my PI without warning or confirmation. Sigh.

I'll try to struggle through this, and maybe post a separate thread for issues. After all, all I want to do at this point is test the servos and the rear wheel drive motor, to make sure I did not fry something more complicated on my motor hat as a result of my reverse polarity issue.

1597721285

1594507930 replied at 2020-8-3 07:37 AM
Now I am on to the software. OMG what a mess. I tried following the video but right away there were  ...

Thank you for your feedback, we have updated the path of the setup.py file