Photos of various robots I've made over the years

[Whales]

At the top of the page are pictures of poor and incomplete robots from when I first started out with electronics, but things get better (and less blurrier) as you scroll down:

http://halestrom.net/darksleep/blog/012_robots_past/

I have also thrown in a few 'short' stories about me, safety and batteries.



Tell me what you think 

[radar_macgyver]

Cool!

If you wanted to drive FETs with dead-time, instead of a CPLD, why not use a purpose-made half-bridge driver? Like the IRS2109 or others in its family? These also let you use very beefy FETs that can't normally be driven direct from a micro output due to the gate capacitance charging currents. Also, you could use FETs for both low and high-side.

[netdudeuk]

Great work 

[ez24]

 

[Whales]

Thanks guys

If you wanted to drive FETs with dead-time, instead of a CPLD, why not use a purpose-made half-bridge driver? Like the IRS2109 or others in its family? These also let you use very beefy FETs that can't normally be driven direct from a micro output due to the gate capacitance charging currents. Also, you could use FETs for both low and high-side.

The purpose of the relay was to avoid complications like this.  I'll have a look at that part.

[tuvix]

Mosfet gate drivers such as the DGD2103AS8-13 are a life saver. They have built in gate delays to prevent the high current spikes that tend to blow mosfets in high current applications. Good Mosfet can be $3-8 and can start to add up quick when they burn up. To me it's worth adding an extra $.50 per half bridge to protect them.