I need help designing a dual pwm circut. I need a circut that will run two 5v motors, but there's a catch... I need one control to control the speed of both and one another control to adjust the difference in speed between the two motors. ie I need, at the extreme, one to run dead slow while the other runs at top speed and vice versa. Anyone have any ideas, PLEASE!

 

Hello,

How will the speed of the two motors be related?
Will it be in the following order?
0 100
20 80
40 60
60 40
80 20
100 0
in percentage of speed.

Bertus

 

Yes and the 'overall' control can be dropped if its too big a pain

 

You need your PWM signal to drive two current amplifiers that operate opposite of each other.
A PNP and an NPN transistor would be my suggestion.
Drive both with the same signal. One will operate from the positive voltage pulse and the other will operate on the ground or negative voltage part of the PWM signal.
A single pot can control a 555 timer in this way, but I think you are limited to a 95/5 percent max and min.

 

Ok, cool. I took some electronics courses in Highschool but that was a LONG time ago and I recently started dabbling again. So I would run both the transistors off the same output and just wire each to a separate motor? Any chance to get a diagram? Im rusty as hell at this. this is the circut I currently have breadboarded.

 

I can be done fairly easily with a mcu.

Short of that:

1) use a 555 timer to generate pwm 1, and invert it to generate pwm 2.
2) use two dual-gang pots + two 555 timers. the first dual-gang pot are in phase and controls the pwm duty cycle; the 2nd dual-gang pot are out of phase and applied to the CV pins to control the differential.

 

Ok, cool. I took some electronics courses in Highschool but that was a LONG time ago and I recently started dabbling again. So I would run both the transistors off the same output and just wire each to a separate motor? Any chance to get a diagram? Im rusty as hell at this. this is the circut I currently have breadboarded.

Something like this added to your 555.

 

Simply use a PIC chip and you can read the speed of each motor and control them any way you want.
I have a number of projects doing this already and it's best done with stepper motors if you want full control.