Interfacing digital proportional to DC motor control

Thread Starter

Denesius

Joined Feb 5, 2014
124
Here's hoping the old RC crowd is still active!
I have a 2-channel digital proportional Transmitter & Receiver. On each receiver channel, the output is a PWM signal in relation to the transmitter joystick position. At one joystick extreme the PWM is mostly negative (the negative half dominates), at the other position, it's mostly positive.
I would like to take one channel output, and use it to drive a pair of bidirectional DC motor (24VDC, 150 Watts each), with the motors stopped when the PWM output is balanced, and moving in one direction or the other based on the position of the joystick off of center (The motor drive would utilize MOSFET's). The second channel would drive the motors asymmetrically, in order to achieve some semblance of steering.
I have 3 questions:
1- What the simplest way to use the balanced PWM (on the throttle joystick) to determine the motor rest zone (ie-no power applied at all)? Although specific guidance is always appreciated, I'm only looking for inspirational ideas;
2- What's the best way to proportionally drive the forward and reverse halves of the motor motion? I was thinking of buffering the PWM output and feeding a high/low driver such as the IR2110 to drive the MOSFETS in turn.
3- Am I trying to reinvent the wheel here? Is there something like this already available off the shelf?

Thank you ahead of time for any suggestions
 
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