Supermodified™
The Robotic Rebirth of the Hobby Servo
Our interest in small to medium-scale hobby robotics has led 01 Mechatronics to the development of the Supermodified™ series – ATMega328P-based direct replacement boards for standard and ¼ scale rc-servos that will allow for full PID speed / position control of your servomotor. Motion profiles are of course supported and with a contol loop closing at 1Khz you will never be 'out of place'.
The second generation of our Supermodified™ boards comes with 12-bit position encoding translating to 0.08° increments as well as, magnetic allignment and optimal field strength indicator LEDs (optionaly installed). The Magnetic Encoder (MagEnc™) monitors a disk magnet that mounts directly onto your servo's output shaft and hence the backlash is acounted for! Powered by Freescale’s MC33887 IC capable of accommodating 5A continuous (and up to 7A bursts), the Supermodified™ is perfectly suited for hobby servos and small-to-medium DC motors.
You can find information on the first version of the SuperModified™ here.
With overall dimensions of 16x16x12 mm (MCU board + Magnetic Absolute/Incremental Encoder board + Power Amplifier board), the Supermodified™ is here and can fit almost anywhere. The three boards stack neatly together eliminating the need for cables running from board to board.
Wiring-up your project has never been easier. All Supermodified™ controllers can be daisy-chained thus minimising number of cables in your system. All controllers can communicate using I2C or RS485 allowing a considerable number of devices to be members of the control bus. Furthermore each Supermodified™ controller also has a number of analog inputs as well as, digital I/Os available, which are directly configurable and accessible by your host controller through the comms bus.
We have developed AVR support libraries (I2C/TWI and UART comms, Timer control, ISR support routines, ADC and many more) that will beyond doubt save lots of time on preliminary development at a minimal cost, allowing artists - hobbyists - students – researchers to focus their time on more important aspects of their work. Furthermore the Supermodified™ controller which is re-programmable and directly Arduino compatible (4MHz faster) comes with a comprehensive datasheet and many other support documents that will guide through novel users as well as, experienced ones.
| Feature |
Hobby Servo | Supermodified™ |
| Position control | Yes | Yes |
| Speed control | No | Yes |
| Profiled position control | No | Yes |
| Velocity feedback | No | Yes |
| Incremental position feedback | No | Yes |
| Absolute position feedback | No | Yes |
| Additional I/Os | No | Yes |
| Additional analog inputs | No | Yes |
| Continuous rotation | No | Yes |
| Current feedback | No | Yes |
| Bus interfaces (I2C, RS485) | No | Yes |
| Attribute |
Benefit |
| PID Speed / Position control | Accurately adjust your servo’s rotation speed according to your project’s needs |
| Profiled position/speed control | No more jerky motions on your robots, only smooth transitions from one setpoint to the next |
| Velocity feedback | Feedback on the exact speed of your motor – produce more efficient algorithms and better overall robot behaviour |
| Incremental position feedback | Feedback based on a 0.08° increments! Store your position in EPROM and recover it after RESET |
| Absolute position feedback | Know your robot’s joint positions straight after controller initialisation. Store your position in EPROM and recover it after RESET |
| Additional I/Os | Use your Supermodified to also control other devices with 4 available GPIOs on the Supermodified™ MCU board |
| Additional analog inputs | Get feedback from analog sensors with 4 analog inputs on the Supermodified™ MCU board |
| Ambient temperature measurement | Avoid overheating the ‘guts’ of the servo by knowing ambient air temperature |
| Current feedback | Avoid excessive stresses and easily calculate torque-demand on your servomotor during operation by knowing the motor’s current consumption |
| Bus interfaces (I2C, RS485) | Everything is on the comms bus! Up to 127 (wt. I2C, TWI interface), 248 (wt. RS485 interface) Supermodified™ nodes can be controlled by a single host |
| Form Factor | Control electronics, absolute feedback element, motor drive electronics, motor and gearbox now fit inside a servo. No more messy boards and wires |
| Units (standard servo) | Price/Unit | Discount | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Assembly to the servo of your choice upon request | |||
| *prices in dollars are indicative only; actual price is calculated based-on the Euro-to-Dollar exchange rate, on the day the invoice is issued |
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| 1 | 44.90€ | 55.02$* | - |
| 2+ | 42.65€ | 52.26$* | Save 5% |
| 5+ | 41.53€ | 50.90$* | Save 7.5% |
| 10+ | 40.41€ | 49.52$* | Save 10% |
| Units (1/4 scale servo) | Price/Unit | Discount | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Assembly to the servo of your choice upon request | |||
| *prices in dollars are indicative only; actual price is calculated based-on the Euro-to-Dollar exchange rate, on the day the invoice is issued |
|||
| 1 | 48.60€ | 59.56$* | - |
| 2+ | 46.35€ | 56.80$* | Save 5% |
| 5+ | 45.23€ | 55.43$* | Save 7.5% |
| 10+ | 44.11€ | 54.06$* | Save 10% |
- Kerafol KeraTherm® KL90 thermal-conductive, electrical-isolating adhesive film 10x10mm for €0.15/$0.20. Use this adhesive film to both mount and account for thermal relief for the the MD01™.
- Kerafol Keratherm® SoftTherm® electrical-isolating, thermal-conductive, highly-elastic, ceramic-filled film 16mm x 16mm x 5mm for €0.75/$1.00.
Note that the SuperModified kit is shipped assembled and cabled. Also, as of 14/6/2010 the Arduino bootloader is also installed in the PicoMCU - making it programmable from an UART (relevant documentation will be published soon).
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The SuperModified™ in action |
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The SuperModified™ used to control a 5 DOF robotic manipulator. The CAD designs of a 6 DOF robotic manipulator will soon be freely available to dowload from our open engineering page |
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Supermodified™ Factsheet |
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Supermodified™ V.2 Datasheet (revision 1) |
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(Deprecated)Supermodified™ V1.0 Datasheet |
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Supermodified™ QuickStart: Preliminary Assembly Guide |
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Supermodified™ QuickStart: Conrolling from Arduino |
01 Mechatronics aims to assist your quest for knowledge in the area of Robotics and promote Open Engineering. Download the Eagle files for our Supermodified™ boards from here (right-click > Save as...) Please note that our controllers are programmable using Open-Source development tools.
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PicoMCU™ schematic |
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PicoMCU™ schematic - Eagle file |
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MD01™ schematic |
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MD01™ schematic - Eagle file |
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MagEnc™ schematic (AS5145) |
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MagEnc™ schematic (AS5145) - Eagle file |
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Visit our Google Code Supermodified™ page |
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Visit our Google Code AVR Library page |
The Supermodified page text and all related files are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License.
All source code is distributed under the GNU V3 General Public License.