Crystal’s Status Report – 11/15

This week I started working on incorporating the PWM expanders and big stepper motor driver. Previously the servo motors were directly plugged into the GPIO pins of the STM. This would not have been efficient because a single STM does not have enough ports to directly connect 32 servo motors, so we had to buy 2 PWM expanders. Similarly, our stepper motors were previously run on A4988 stepper motor drivers, which did not have enough current to support the weight of our carriage holding 32 servos and gantry belt. I slightly moved the schedule around by working on incorporating these components first instead of programming an interrupt for the rest mechanism. I am still on track. Next week I hope to have all 32 servos working on the PWM expanders and the stepper motors on the heavy duty driver.