2021-04-13, 03:30 PM
(2021-04-12, 10:51 PM)billynomates Wrote: Is that a sincere question? If I said I was a software engineer by profession (albeit a junior), and I've spent several hours hacking away to try and understand the code and get it to work
Don't expect to understand it fully after just a few hours. There are some tricky things going on in motor.ino. The documentation could improve, but I'm not going to sacrifice functionality or make the code significantly longer just to make the code more readable. Making this easier to understand for someone (most people) may make it difficult for me, but more importantly, I don't have much reason to make this particular part of the project modifiable by most, otherwise I'm afraid of the bad results from people mindlessly tweaking things and not realizing the side effects (which there are many due to the interrupt driven nature)
Much safer to tweak python you actually get understandable errors. I have a bit of code in avr-gcc for example, and so I've been using this processor for a while. With gcc you can read the source for days and still not understand a lot.
Sorry for your frustration, but the IBT-2 is not really that good of a part. Based on specs my regular motor controller design dissipates a lot less heat therefore is much more efficient, and I rate it only to 7 amps (so it stays cool and efficient) This IBT2 somehow rated to 43 amps, well, I would like to see it do this for any significant time. Maybe with a fan?
Even at 20 amps continuous it is in question if it can manage or not. The autopilot is generally intermittent, so it may be able to "work" for most hydraulic pumps at least most sea conditions, but the heat generated in the ibt2 could become significant in rougher seas.
So for these reasons as well making the sketch easier to understand would only encourage this part and likely just cause more problems or poor performance. Really this part is "ok" for tiller pilots (just a bit less efficient), but I think a lot of people are going by the 43 amp rating which is the point at which it catches fire. I don't want to limit anyone, and you have the same code but how long it will take you is not really my consideration as I have spent years on this. What do you think?
If someone can get it working with a simple #define for IBT2 without damaging motor.ino in other ways I would be glad to merge it.