Book Image

Intel Edison Projects

By : Avirup Basu
Book Image

Intel Edison Projects

By: Avirup Basu

Overview of this book

Change the way you look at embedded electronics with Intel Edison. It is a small computing platform packed with a set of robust features to deliver hands-on performance, durability, and software support. This book is a perfect place to kickstart development and rapid prototyping using Intel Edison. It will start by introducing readers to the Intel Edison board and explaining how to get started with it. You will learn how to build a mini weather station, which will help you to acquire temperature and smoke level and push it to the IoT platform. Then you will see how to build a home automation device and control your appliances using an Android app. Furthermore, we will build a security system using a webcam to detect faces and perform voice recognition. Toward the end, the book will demonstrate how you can build two robots, which will be based on different line sensing sensors and can be controlled by a PC. The book will guide the readers through each and every step of execution of a project, using Intel Edison.
Table of Contents (7 chapters)

High performance motor driver sample with code

In Chapter 5, Autonomous Robotics with Intel Edison, we saw an application of L293D and we also wrote some code for it to control motors. However, L293D fails in high performance applications. To tackle this, we had a brief discussion about an alternative high-power driver.

Here, we'll deep dive into the driver, as it has been my personal favorite and is used in virtually all our robots:

Dual motor driver high power. Picture source: http://robokits.co.in/motor-drives/dual-dc-motor-driver-20a

The driver has the following five control pins:

  • Gnd: Ground
  • DIR: When low, the motor rotates in one direction; when high, it rotates in another direction
  • PWM: Pulse width modulation to control the speed of the motor; the recommended frequency range is 20Hz - 400Hz
  • BRK: When high, it halts the motor in operation
  • 5V: Regulated 5V output from motor driver board

Now let&apos...