Started Installing Dome Speed Controller for Droid #2

Why stop at one new speed controller for droid #2 when he can have two? To date, both droids have used a "poor man's dome controller," where I used Mike Senna's old design of employing a servo and two bump switches, along with some clever wiring, to turn the dome. This dome controller was limited to full-on or full-off, there was no proportional speed in relation to the joystick on the transmitter. Dimension Engineering's 2x12RC speed controller fits the bill for this task. This controller supports two motors, but for the dome I only need one.

Wiring is pretty simple, just the positive and negative wires from the main 12 volt battery, and the two wires leading to the dome motor. Those thick wires for the main power are going to need be replaced with smaller ones.



DIP switches allow the user to auto-calibrate the controller to the joystick, so that it knows that center-stick means no movement, full left means full speed counter-clockwise (from above), and full right means full speed clockwise (from above). Once calibrated, another set of DIP switches allows these settings to be remembered so that calibration is locked in and doesn't need to be set again. I should note that I saw some dome drift until I plugged in the second channel into one of the unused channels on the receiver.

I plan to install standoffs for this speed controller, as I did for the for the foot motor speed controller.