Menü
Aktuelles
Von:
Filter

New member with an old RL500 chassis!

S

superpat

New member
Hi,

I have just found your site.... I am very happy! :woohoo:

I have an old RL500 that is complete apart from the wired control box. ( It was also getting very hard to start it working, it used to sit and sulk for hours before starting to mow).

NOW I can reuse it using the Ardumower design.

I have had a quick look at the schematics and read some of the articles.

The first thing I would ask, is there any one who has constructed the Ardumower on a Friemdly Robotics chassis i.e. RL XXX?

The RL500 has brush motors on the drive wheels, with a pulse counter on each wheel for speed and distance travelled. I see from your schematic that you are using stepper motors for the drive wheels, but I can find no sensors in the Ardumower schamatic for speed of each wheel or distance travelled. How is this done in your system?

Is there options in your software for brush motor drive and separate speed control?

many thanks

Patrick
 
Hello Patrick,

Great that you found us :)

Friendly Robotics: Actually Gunther is using an RL500, however I'm not sure if he moved to the 'Ardumower' implementation yet: http://www.ardumower.de/index.php/de/forum/your-projects/97-gunmower-rl500
Motor: we are using brushed motors too (the stepper motor was a test only), and you can reuse the pulse counter (you can use both one wire and two wire encoders). You can find more details in the Ardumower 'Odometry' article. The encoder/pulse counter might be missing in the schematics, however it's in the code already (more precisely: reading it out). We intend to add speed control to the code soon.

Currently, the speed control is configured by PWM duty cycle (=>adjusts the max. voltage that the motor sees), and time parameters (distance traveled).

Regards,
Alexander

BTW: just found a pinout for the RL500 odometry sensor (connect the middle pin to the Arduino as described in the Ardumower robot config file 'aml50.h'):

http://memakingthings.blogspot.de/2012/05/hall-effect-sensors.html
 
Thank you for your reply.

I have been reading a lot of the entries on your website and forum this last week, and things are becoming clearer to me!

Also I found the Ardumower sketches and started to analysis them, (hard though!)

I have ordered a number of bits and I shall have to wait until they arrive here. In the mean time I am planning how to implement and mount the hardware.

In the OLD RL500, all the electronics are on a vertical pcb, 29cm wide x 13.5 cm tall, mounted vertically in 4 rubber wedges, two at the bottom and two at the top.

I have a piece of FR4 D/S pcb I can cut to this size, so I think I will use this to replace the existing pcb. I will mount the Arduinos and sensors on one side on stand offs, and the high current stuff, (motor drivers, chargering cct, and power supply) on the other side.

It will give some immunity to cross talk and hold the component parts securely, also the cable runs and inter board connections will be nice and short.

A question.

The RL500 mows by reversing direction, when it detects the boundary wire. It has 4 sensors, two front and 2 rear. Reading the translated German forum, I believe you are considering implementing a similar scheme, but I found the posts difficult to understand.

Please can you clarify if you are implementing a reversing mode of operation, (as distinct from turning 180 deg at the end of each row of mowing) ?
 
Status report

1. I have cut out a base board from double sided FR4 pcb, the same size and shape as the original RL500 pcb.

2. I have ordered all the bits needed to build the Ardumower, that I do not already possess. I am waiting for them to arrive.

3. I have checked and recharged the RL500 2 x 12V deep cycle lead acid batteries, I think they will be OK for testing, even if they have lost a lot of their capacity.

Outstandinding design issues.

1. I have to design a three motor driver for the mower motors, instead of the one FET driver cct shown in the schematic.

2. Re-use the 4 RL500 wire sensors 2 front and 2 rear. I still have a working original RL500 wire generator

3. Changes to software for 2. above, to allow the mower to move and cut in forward and reverse directions.

4. Re-use the original RL500 odometry sensors.

5. incorporate in the Ardumower software the RL500 anti-lift sensor (detector on front wheel pivot used as a safety sensor).

I will report more later.

Cheers P
 
@Patrick: actually, the "bidirectional" mowing pattern was added a few days ago - you can see it simulated in the Ardumower simulator .

Regarding your other software modifications, we can help of course. Also, we are currently redesigning the wire generator and receiver - all hardware is the same, only the software code for both changes. Currently, we are frequency filtering and evaluating signal strength (all by software), in the new design we will be filtering with high sensivity (software based matched filtering like e.g. used with GPS) and evaluating signal polarity (again all by software). This has some advantages, e.g. we can detect the side of the wire and we can even detect the wire in the center of it (due to the increased sensivity).
 
Hi all

I'm also a new member

I found an rl500 not working anymore and would like to share the rl500 migration to,ardumower

Can we share findings ?

I will start this evening to open and discover the rl500 inside =)
 
Hi Walter,

It is good to have another RL500 rebuilder on the forum

I have owned my RL500 for over 7 years. My RL500 was all working, apart from the wired control box, before I decided to hack it.

I spent a lot of money on the RL500 over the years, upgrading to knobbly treaded wheels, new mower blades, new batteries, installing new firmware and putting thermostats on all the motors. (The motors have nylon inside and if they run too hot the nylon melts, It was a well known defect with the early RL500 series).

So, I would like to extend its life, I do not want to change too much of the hardware, apart from changing the electronics to the ARDUMOWER design. It will also help to keep me from sleeping in front of the TV, and keep my brain working as I get older and older!

Today I received the final electronic parts, I have started laying out my new baseboard, to replace the RL500 original electronics board.

BTW, Do you know the trick of getting inside the beast? (Remove the black plastic wedges in the tongues of the fixing dowels on the underside of the chassis).

Keep in touch

regards

Patrick
 
Hi Patrick

I'm new to ardumower so need to read a lot on this forum

I build a large mower chassis with 2 wheelchair motors and a fuel engine for a large mower project

First i want to play with the electronics of ardumower so i found a non working RL500

Defective battery etc

I want to use the RL500 as a scale model to build,test etc the electronics

I dont think it is worth to try to repair the original mower

So tommorw I will try to open it and have a look how it is inside

I love to share findings and code for the RL500 project

As I understood well the RL500 has 2 drive motors, 3 mowing motors

Pulse sensors on the drive motors

4 coils to pickup the border wire signal

I dont understand the borderwire generator, i fired it up and had a look on an osciloscope

Stange signal on the output

I may asume that it is also working on 8khz

Are there any schematics around on the original RL500 ?

Walter
 
Hi Walter


Friendly Robotics, the company who make the RL500 and range, are not very friendly regarding schematics. They are a very closed source company. I have tried for years to find a proper schematic!

Here is the best collection of information I have found:- http://www.robomowerwiki.com/Main_Page
regards


Patrick
 
Hi

Today I opened the RL500 and found the following parts

- 3 mow motors Johnson 97750 3A0931, no data on the johnson website, but 24V motors, Current free running 1A
- 2 motors 1 left 1 right ,Johnson 97750 3A0931, no data on the johnson website
- 3 bumperswitches, 1 left front, 1 right front, 2 rear in paralell
- 4 coils, 2 in the front L+R, 2 on the rear L+R, value is around 100mH
- 1 lift sensor attached to the front wheel, Led + phototransistor
- 2 odometer sensors, hall effect sensor with magnets on each drive motor


I tested all the parts and are all OK

Meanwhile i made a board ,same dimensions as the original PCB

Next step is to use a minimum configuration to do a first test
Attachment: https://forum.ardumower.de/data/media/kunena/attachments/1340/foto.jpg/
 
Zuletzt bearbeitet von einem Moderator:
Hi all, i've got an old RL500 too and i project to use it.
First time i decided to repair it. there is an compass inside and it was defect and impossible to repair ( the mower made large circles and don't want to calibrated) so i bought an used mainboard on ebay but it don't work because pinouts of the microcontroler were distroyed :S :S so i challenge to replace the electronics by a siemens s7200 or by an arduino :lol: .
@ walter i found shematic of the rl 500 (see the attachement)
it is in french (but it's not a problem for me cause i am ... french :p ).

Regards.

Amaloumimi.
 
Hi Amaloumimi

Where is the schematic?, I cannot see any attachments to your post :(


Welcome BTW.

I am restarting the project again following the experiment DUE system being developed.

I have got 90 % of the parts, but yet have to make a three o/p mower motor driver!

regards

Patrick
 
Hello, I am Klaus from South West Germany, around 50km north from the Lake of Constance (Friedrichshafen). A native speaking German.

I have a maybe 15 year old RL500 that has not been used the past 6-8 years. Before, it has been heavily used. The battery has gone and I am still not sure if I should go for the complete Ardumower with Chassis or bring the RL500 back. I was always looking around to have a working robot mower. But I was not willing to go ahead with the old RL500 technology neither I was willing to spend money on new closed source. A few years ago I talked to the Arduino guys in Trento but there was not much around. Luckily last year I met you guys at the Maker Faire in Berlin.

As I have a Renault Twizy and there is this rental battery issue I would like to use the 18650 batteries for the mower to learn.

For now its best to have a quick install with the ardumower state of the art technology. I soldered the board (seems to work), got the under voltage protection (battery protector) and also the motor driver protection. @markus, thank you for the quick and proper shipments.

With Bluetooth (HC-05) still there are some problems. The LED is not going on. And i was not able to connect with the phone. This can be step2.
The clock is here but not installed.
WLAN is also here but that seems not in the software right now.
Ultrasonic and Rain Sensor are here but not prepared.

For the voltage i like the ones with the display.

Attached there are two pictures. I intend to used four sets (each consist of 7) of the 19650 batteries on the picture.

I have in installed the 1.0a4 Azurite software. Also I am able to communicate with the board. (if needed I go to the most recent software).

Where I am currently stuck, how is the cabling from the Ardumower 1.2 board to the drive motors and the grass cutting motor (I will use one of the three for now). There is some documentation on the Forum and the Wiki. But I was not able to understand fully. Is there good wiring plan or a picture somewhere ? Do the motors work when the speed sensor is not connected ?

If you can give me some directions or hints, that should help as I am not an electronics specialist but some knowledge is there.

Thanks in advance.
Attachment: https://forum.ardumower.de/data/media/kunena/attachments/3426/IMG_7153.jpg/
 
Zuletzt bearbeitet von einem Moderator:
Hi Boilevin,
not right now. I had to wait for some additional part and I am a little stuck with other work. The growing grass pushes :)
Most important for me is having a working machine with 1 Motor (even without sensor).
But you mentioned a good point. The wheels are working but the motor never started. Maybe this is the reason.
I will come back to you,
Klaus
 
Du musst dich einloggen oder registrieren, um hier zu antworten.
Oben