Alright, let me tell you about my recent tinkering with something called “motorrev.” It was a bit of a bumpy ride, but hey, that’s how we learn, right?
So, it all started when I stumbled upon this project – motorrev. Seemed interesting, something about reverse engineering motors, or at least playing around with motor control in a different way. I thought, “Why not? Let’s dive in!”
First things first, I tried to get the thing running. I cloned the repo, dug through the documentation (which, let’s be honest, was a bit sparse), and started messing with the settings. I was banging my head against the wall for a while because the example code just wouldn’t compile. Turns out, I was missing some dependencies. I installed this, that, and the other thing – a real dependency hell situation, you know?
After finally getting the code to compile, I still couldn’t get the motor to spin correctly. It was either twitching or just making a sad buzzing sound. I started debugging. I printed out a bunch of values, stared at waveforms, and generally just felt lost. Then it hit me! The pin assignments were wrong! I swapped a couple of pins in the code, re-uploaded it, and bam! The motor started spinning like a champ.
But the story doesn’t end there. The motor was spinning, sure, but it wasn’t smooth. It was jerky and unpredictable. I figured it had to do with the control algorithm. I started tweaking the PID parameters – Proportional, Integral, and Derivative gains. This was a whole other level of pain. I’d change a value, upload the code, see what happened, and then repeat. It was like trying to tune a guitar with boxing gloves on.
Eventually, after hours of fiddling, I found a set of parameters that worked reasonably well. The motor was spinning smoothly, responding to commands, and generally behaving itself. It wasn’t perfect, but it was good enough for now.
What I learned from all this?
- Dependency management is a pain, especially when you’re working with poorly documented projects.
- Debugging is an art form. You have to be patient, persistent, and willing to try a bunch of different things.
- PID tuning is black magic. There’s a lot of theory behind it, but at the end of the day, it’s mostly just trial and error.
Would I do it again? Probably. It was frustrating, but also kind of fun. And I learned a lot about motor control in the process. Plus, now I have a motor that spins, which is always a win.
