High Performance Ethernet Servo Motor

I haven't had enough experience with IoT and real time control over Ethernet (except IP camera control) or the internet but (for example) wouldn't there be a small enough delay to make very fine positioning by hand control in real time using a visual signal as the feedback a problem?

If this is the case this may limit fine control applications to local Ethernet networks unless the signal is buffered.

Is there I market? I don't see why not.

Yes. The motors are controlling their position by them self. You only command target positions. Thus they care about how to reach and hold the positions.

The IoT is a bit of marketing. The motors are capable to be controlled over the Internet but I don’t have seen any suitable application yet. The big bonus is that we do not need anything around like cable adapters (CAN to USB converts and so). It’s a real plug & Play Motor.

So if you wish to make a mobile robot you only need two of this motor, one Wi-Fi router and an IP camera – and two wheels. The rest you can do in Phyton, C#, Matlab whatever. There is no reason to buy an Arudiono with Motorshields and no wiring and so on.

If you're interested in my meanings, should I lend you a dictionary?

Alright, I got it - I wanted to say I am interested in your opinions.

Just a few observations regarding your video:

First of all this looks like a nifty device. Nice and compact with built-in intelligent controller. Well done!

In the video you show an exploded view but then mis-identify the motor's end bell as a 'magnet' just before the animation 'reassembles' the device. In small stepper motors the rotor is the 'magnet'. I would simply omit the 'magnet' identifier from the video as anyone who knows anything about motors (and who might potentially buy this product) would already know what that part is.

Another question which naturally arises - it was my first question when I watched your video: what of other motor sizes? There are as many motor sizes as there are applications for motors, so are you proposing to build unique controllers for every conceivable one? There already exist a plethora of ethernet-connected outboard controllers with and without built-in amplifiers, so is this product for a niche market basically?

I would also consider offering other types of connectivity, mainly optical fibre. Industrial environments can be extremely noisy in electrical terms. Anything involving big current surges and you could have, say, 'ground bounce' making it into your network. I would definitely offer fibre connectivity for something like this.

Thanks for your reply.

Sorry for the confusion. This magnet is for the positions sensor and not the rotor magnet J.

Good point with the motor sizes, I will clarify this at the kickstarter page. There are some NEMA standard formats of motor sizes - we want to adapt our electronics only to them.

There are no devices with an inbuilt webserver as far as I know. Our innovation is the easy operation. Connect the motor to your home network and you can control it by you IPad.

We are also offering the CAN-Bus which is a very robust two wire signal mostly seen in the industry. I have not investigated any researched about the optical system because rarely anyone has such a fiber router at home. And we want to bring motion to everyone :).

Ah, so this is mainly meant for 'home' applications? Are 'makers' your intended audience? You say "R&D offices." Our R&D office was located in a building with some 3000 other employees. Not exactly a 'home' environment (but the cafeteria food was dynamite - they hire five-star chefs).

The magnet is for position sensing? In your video all I see is the flat end of the motor labelled 'magnet.' Nothing that looks like a position encoder. What, are you sensing the rotor's field through the end bell using a Hall-effect sensor or something? How you actually doing it? Just curious.

Mainly markets are R&D, Makers and schools :).

The magnet is not seen in the video, but it is just behind the rotor axis. It is magnetic, the sensor is a hall array that can measure the absolut position of a diametric magnetized magnet.

The sensor is coming from austria microsystems.

Ah, okay. Thanks. (not trying to get you to spill any trade secrets, btw. Just curious, that's all).

What price range for your product shown in the video? Still a ways to go in the kickstarter campaign (first things first), but have you set a price range?

Er, why not go to the market itself, instead of coming here?

Silly question.

One of his intended markets is Chevy Cavalier integration. Where else would he go?

Quite.

So how is plugging in two sets of cables (ethernet + Power) that have to come from a router and a independent power supply an improvement over the old system of just having one cable that plugged into a proper driver/power source that itself linked with the local control network an improvement?

Ethernet (8 wires), Power (2 - 3 wires + ground) total 11 - 12 wires Vs the old system that used three motor power (+ground) and maybe 3 - 4 more for a optional high resolution encoder for a total of 4 or 6 - 7 if an encoder was being used.

I don't get it being as I see it its a simple device that has now been made even more complicated and thus less off the shelf swap out replaceable when it goes down.

Hi Tcmtech,

Did you watch the video? The encoder (from Austria Microsystems) is integrated along with an intelligent controller. The Ethernet connection is only there to pass high-level commands to the controller and Ethernet isn't the only medium it can use. The OP mentioned something about a CAN bus and I suggested fibre also. The data connection could conceivably even be wireless, though that brings along its own can of worms. Pretty nifty little product actually. I'd give it a try if I had an app for it right now.

Nothing about it jumped out at me as being anything I personally would have any use for.

It's way too overly complicated for any type of work I would need such a motor for.

For me A CNC mill conversion would be the closest thing it would be plausibly useful for but then in such an application I can easily and cheaply set things up to use common stepper servos ran from cheap driver units that themselves take direction for whatever computer is running the software and have zero added software programing or other network related gear involved to do it.

Personally if someone gave me one I would likely be more prone to take the controller module off the back of the motor and use the motor with a generic driver and computer and get rid of what i see as unneeded setup and in use operational steps for what I would need it for.

It's just too 'ethernet toaster' like to me. Doable but what is it really accomplishing to justify the added complexity and control that is given?

Fair enough. I myself done a bit of work over the years with motion-control software and hardware, both COTS and roll-yer-own, right up against the raw metal. Years ago worked with a five-axis eucentric stage for an electron microscope. Linear servos and Galil motion controllers that plugged in the ISA bus (remember those), wrote the code in C and used their APIs. It was kinda nice not to have to do all the nitty-gritty coding for velocity profiling, working with raw encoder data an' all that. Just tell it where to go and how fast, or give it a profile and let it work out the details. Something like this offers that sort of convenience, which for me is kinda nice. To each his own I guess.

I swear TC, some days I think you'd be happy to do away with lighters and matches and go back to rubbing sticks together.

You mean to tell me, you do not rub the sticks together? What strange fire is this?

I am a strong believer in making things simple and reliable.

I have had too many points in my life where I wasted or outrightly lost a huge amount of my time and money because something was made more complicated than it needed to be and then it broke and could not be easily or cheaply fixed just because of the unwarranted over complicating of its design.

I really don't like wasting my time on fighting unnecessary technology were it's not needed. Computers lock up. Programs glitch and dump hours of work for no reason, networks go out, electronics smoke when they're needed most and I have spent a fair amount of my life fixing things that rely on that crap that never really needed it for any reason other that for someone to have something to brag about.

My lathe and mill has hand cranks that do the same thing even if the power is turned off.

That said if you devices were dirt cheap and I can run them off of free software that's Windows XP compatible I'd given them a try. I have a bunch of old PCs and router units that don't serve any purpose any more.

Now if you really want my interest come up with a plug and play system where I can control 3 - 4 independant units from a single joystick (X and Y axis movement plus two variable rockers for Z and W axis) that can work as linear actuators with 30 - 36 inch stroke and 12 - 15 inch per second travel rates with no less than say 5 - 6 tons push/pull force and each axis can be configured to run any number of additional actuators by plug and play interface as well. 340 - 400 VDC power source capability of course.

$200 for the joystick controller unit and $450 each of the actuators. That's your working budget to get my interests!

Does that include postage?

I'll pay postage if it all fits inside standard USPS flat rate boxes.

I'm not a total cheap ass with unreasonable expectations.

Go for it!

Nice product, but unless I missed something, where's the absolute position feedback? I understand that you built all that into the controller, but what happens when the force on the motor exceeds the force available from it, and the desired position can't be reached; i.e., there's a jam or some unaccounted force that prohibits the desired motion.

Granted that the same thing can happen using the traditional methods, but where necessary designers provide an external feedback loop totally separate from the control loop, or do you have a module for that that's already buried in your server?

Thanks for the discussion.

The motor is closed loop, it always tries to reach the position with a maximum torque of 0.5 Nm. Is this torque not sufficient then the rotor gets pulled back ways. This is not a problem for the motor, it just pulls with this constant 0.5 Nm against your force.

Does anyone has an Idea where I can promote this servo drive, to gain some awareness of the campaign?

Maybe it's just me but I just can't come up with any application I have ever had where I even thought a servo motor that is capable of running in a totally self contained mode would be practical.

As with others I can see the application relevancy to point but the lack of direct feedback to a master control system loop that is working with multiple other input references seems like a step backwards for general positioning and movement applications.

What target application area are you aiming this at?

You can build and synchronize multiple HDrives, as shown here:

The motors are submitting their positions in 1 kHz! So you can make an accurate path planer for your system. For hard real-time operations you can also use our Step/Dir interface or CAN-Bus interface.

Please have a look at one more application:

This is a 3D laser scanner, build in a half a day!

There is no other motor in the world you can use that fast. Just care about your application and let the HDrive do the motion.

I am sure to an R&D guy, a "maker", an experimenter, this motor will come in handy in changing the position of something they are working with.

What resolution does the stepper/sensor offer? What is the slew rate? Does it approach target at slew, or does it slow down as target position is near? Does it overshoot at all?

I am not up on stepper capability within its current state-of-the-art, that is why all the questions.

Best wishes in getting this to launch.

The resolution is +/- 0.1 degree. Due to our specialized control we are not making steps at all. You can freely configure the internal path planer according (acceleration, deceleration, max. speed) to your requirements.

"Due to our specialized control we are not making steps at all."

You're microstepping the motor, then? What of the torque? Microstepping gives you finer control over the shaft position of course, but you pay a price for that in terms of reduced torque.

No steps. The motor is field oriented, current controlled (FOC). Exactly like a DC motor just with an electrical commutator. You can compare with a torque motor. The torque we produce is continues and constant, there is no torque ripple between steps as a normal stepper motor.

That’s why our electronic is quite expensive, we are controlling the current with around 50kHz. And that’s why we can reach 10'000RPM with our "stepper" motor :).

Interesting.

What's 'quite expensive'? As compared to what? A comparable motor using more conventional (and probably outboard) electronics?

You've already seen we've a few cheapskates here. Nice cheapskates of course, and incorrigible, but cheapskates all the same. (Tcmtech? Are you sure you're not really Hetty Green back from the dead? I'm beginning to wonder! )

I prefer 'financial value realist.'

If the real numbers behind something cannot be openly and honestly discussed, I have little interest in the said service being provided; if that makes me cheap, so be it. But being cheap has allowed me to amass more personal equipment than many common general contractors have at their disposal.

When I ask around for a job to be done and the price behind the lowest bid is still way higher, then I can go out and buy my own machine (and in many cases one that's in better shape than the contractor who made the bid uses ) for a job and do it myself. Something about that just says that someone is cheating people on the value of said work.

The electronics makes our motor expensive, not the motor it self is only 10$. We need an ARM M4 uC, a good current measurement, a high grade magnetic encoder and the ethernet interface - everything on one PCB. The production cost are high because of the dense component placement and the little quantities. We also need a lot of quality control and extensive testing.

If you compare to a servo motor from Germany: nanotec, plug & drive about 230$ but without Ethernet. For this motor you also need a CAN-USB adapter, device drivers etc. if you want to control the motor from your PC.

Ah, thanks for the info!

I just added a comparison chart to the campaign to bring a bit more clearance. We are comparing between arduino, mechadoino and Nanotec. Please have a look.

http://kck.st/2gal6IG

Hi Chris,

Just curious, but besides the regular high-level commands, do you also provide 'low-level' access to such things as the PID gains and so forth? I'm asking because in some applications one might need to change those gains depending on the mechanical load, for example, or are the gains fixed? More generally, how much of the internal setup is actually visible to the user and how much of that can tailored by the user (along with a 'restore to factory settings' if they screw up )?

Yes. You can Independently setup P and I values of Current control, PI from Speed Control and P, I, D from the position controller.

You can also configure maximum acceleration, deceleration and speed of the internal motion planer

Thanks for all your answers, merry christmas :)