Gertbot Robotics Board for Raspberry Pi

GERTBOT offers a simple entry in to robotics with Raspberry Pi. While full robotics capability, like motor feedback, is not available on GERTBOT, its price point makes it an attractive and useful plug and play introduction to robotic controls. GERTBOT works with Raspberry Pi Model A, B and B.

The Gertbot is a motor/power controller board for the Raspberry-Pi. The strength of the board is that it has its own CPU which frees up the Raspberry-Pi from a lot of intense computations and will take care of all the real time requirements. All you have to do is give it high level commands. Like: Board 2, Motor 1, take 2432 steps at 67 Hz. Even giving those commands is done for you using the free GUI which comes with it!

Specific Applications: Walking Robot, Robotic Arms, Balancing Robots

Hardware features:

• Four H-bridges 8V-30V, 2.5A
• Bridges can be re-configured for 2x 5A or 1x 10A
• Two open drain outputs 30V, 3A
• Power full 64MHZ ARM Cortex-M3 processor
• RS232 connects direct to the Raspberry-Pi or other serial interface
• Cascade port to control up to four boards at a time
• 20-pin connector programmable for:
  • Automatic motor end-stop
  • Four 12-Bit ADC ports
  • Two 12-bit DAC ports
  • 8-16 general purpose I/O

Software controllable features:

• Brushed motors:
  • Control direction
  • Speed control PWM 10Hz-10KHz, 0-100%
  • Soft start 0.1sec .. 5 seconds prevents in-rush current
  • Stop on switch hit
• Stepper motors:
  • Take X-steps in either direction
  • Step speed 0.06 Hz .. 5KHz
  • Stop on switch hit
• Digital Command Control (model train control):
  • Can send any DCC command 3..6 bytes
  • Programmable pre-amble length and repeat count
• Short-circuit or high temperature error detection
• On error, keep running, stop motor, stop board or stop all boards
• I/O pins programmable functions
• Emergency stop, halts whole system