HexMotor 2.3 and pressure-sensor boards

Top view of my second PC board. 3 copies of HexMotor 2.3 and 2 copies each of 3 different breakout boards for a pressure sensor.

I got the boards back from 4pcb.com about a week ago.

The HexMotor rev2.3 boards have several new features: LEDs for +5v and +6.25v, a reset button, 16-bit shift register instead of 8-bit, servo outputs connected to pins 13, 7, 2, 9, 10 (rather than to the pins used for PWM).  The new board should be able to do either 6 PWM motors or 4 PWM motors, 5 servos, and 2 non-modulated reversible motors.  I was going to have the robotics club solder the board today, but they did not have time.

I made some breakout boards for the MPXHZ6250A pressure sensors from Freescale Semiconductor,  which gave me my first taste of SMD soldering.  At least the design uses gull-wing pins, which can be hand soldered.  The breakout board that I think that the robotics club will end up using puts a pressure sensor on one side and headers for a piggyback ADXL335 breakout board on the back.  that way there only need to be one set of wires for connecting the analog inputs and power to the sensors.

That is the board I soldered a sensor to.

Top view of the breakout board with the sensor and headers soldered in place.

The pressure sensors are tiny! I found it fairly difficult to solder the  sensor to the boards, even holding it with clamping tweezers. I did eventually get everything to stick with no shorts between the 3 signal wires, but I did have some trouble with the unused copper pads delaminating from the board.  For future reference: all pads should have wires going to them (even the unused pads) to have enough surface area for good adherence and so that some of the pad is tucked under the solder mask.

Here are the solder connections on the side where none of the pins are used.

Here are the solder connections for the power and signal pins (and an SMD capacitor).

Despite the rather sloppy soldering, the pressure sensor does work.  It turns out that the port size is just the right size for Lego pneumatics components, so testing was pretty easy.

Sensor attached to Lego pump and gauge for testing.

Here are the results of calibration tests with the (probably not very accurate) Lego gauge, done by my son and me.

Pressure (psi)	Arduino analogRead
0	367
5	518
6	542
7	576
8	599
9	632
10	657
11	683
12	710
13	734
14	775
15	801
16	832
17	861
18	887
19	915
20	941
21	967
22	1000

The range is about right, since 22 psi plus one atmosphere is about 250kPa, which is supposed to be the high end of the sensor’s range. Also, 600″ (50′) of water is 21.67 psi, so the range from 367 to 1000 corresponds to about 50′, so the sensor should give the robotics team a resolution of about 1″ for measuring depth, as expected from the spec sheet.

The data are well fit by The club members will have to recalibrate the pressure sensor in water, to get calibration as depth in cm. They’ll probably have to re-zero the sensor every day they use it, to compensate for atmospheric pressure, since it is an absolute pressure gauge.

New board designed

I’ve just sent a new set of boards for fab.  The HexMotor rev2.3 boards have several new features: LEDs for +5v and +6.25v, a reset button, 16-bit shift register instead of 8-bit, servo outputs connected to pins 13, 7, 2, 9, 10 (rather than to the pins used for PWM).  The new board should be able to do either 6 PWM motors or 4 PWM motors, 5 servos, and 2 non-modulated reversible motors.

I’m also making some breakout boards for the MPXHZ6250A pressure sensors from Freescale Semiconductor, which will require doing some SMD soldering.  At least the design uses gull-wing pins, which can (supposedly) be hand soldered.  One of the breakout boards also has a place for mounting an ADXL335 accelerometer, which may be more difficult to solder.  I don’t think I want to spend the money for a hot-air rework station, and I’m a bit dubious about my ability to solder using a toaster oven.

The pressure sensors are tiny!  My original suggestion to the robotics club was to drill a hole in the dry box and superglue the pressure sensor to the inside of the box (after the pressure sensor had been attached to the breakout board, of course).  Now I’m not so sure that there will be enough glue area to hold firmly enough.  Perhaps a dab of some sealant on the outside of the box might help, if we can keep from plugging the hole in the sensor.

The breakout board that I think that the robotics club will end up using puts a pressure sensor on one side and headers for a piggyback ADXL335 breakout board on the back.  that way there only need to be one set of wires for connecting the analog inputs and power to the sensors.

One limitation of the Arduino for use with this combination of sensors is that the accelerometer is a 3v part and the pressure sensor is a 5v part. We’ll have to set up the analog-to-digital converter on the Arduino to have a 5v range, which reduces the precision of the acceleration readings.

I’ve also bought some other sensors (not for the underwater vehicle, but for physics class and dry robotics): a couple of ultrasonic rangefinders.  More on those in a separate post, after I’ve had a chance to play with them.

Pressure sensor

I’ve been thinking about what other parts I need to buy for the high-school Robotics Club, so that they can finish their underwater vehicle.

Some I’ve known about for a while, but just haven’t gotten it together to buy the (expensive parts).  For example, they will need several IP-68 connectors for the tether power, for the tether CAT-5 cable (see Long USB cable problem solved), for the motors, and for whatever suite of tools they build for this year’s challenge.  I bought a 4-pin Buccaneer standard connector (made by Bulgin)  for the power tether, and am leaning toward 8-pin mini Buccaneer connectors for the motor and tools.  I’ve still  not decided whether to get another 8-pin mini Buccaneer for the Ethernet connection, or to try using their IP-68 ethernet connector.

One that I only just started thinking about is a pressure sensor for determining depth. The challenges for the past 2 years have involved going to a particular depth, so having a depth gauge is a good idea.

Pressure sensors are classified into 4 types: differential, absolute, gauge, and sealed gauge.  In truth they are all differential, measuring the difference in pressure.  The absolute gauges measure the difference to a vacuum chamber, the gauge-pressure sensors measure the difference to atmospheric pressure, and the sealed gauge sensors measure the difference to a sealed chamber that has a known pressure in it (probably around one atmosphere).

If the club members put the pressure sensor sticking through the wall of the dry box, we could use any of the types of pressure sensor, but absolute or sealed gauge would be best, since we don’t know how much the pressure inside the drybox changes as we submerge it.  The sidewalls will flex, so the pressure will go up, but we don’t know how much.

I spent some time today looking for pressure sensors at DigiKey. It looks like absolute pressure sensors are cheaper and easier to find than sealed-gauge, so we’ll go with them.  There are also price variations depending on whether the sensor has temperature compensation, and on whether the output is a low-voltage differential signal or an amplified one ready for input to a microprocessor A/D input.  I’m pretty sure that we need the simplest interface we can afford, so the ones that don’t need external amplifiers are the best bet.

I also spent some time reviewing how much pressure to expect at different depths, so that I could help the club select the appropriate part.  I found an on-line pressure calculator that can convert depth of water to pressure (in PSI, kPa, or atmospheres).  Each meter of depth adds 9.8 kPa (or 1.42 psi).  In a 20′-deep pool,  they could have up to 59.7 kPa, and in a 12m deep pool (like at NASA) they could have up to 117.6 kPa.  Of course, this is just the water pressure that is added to the atmospheric pressure, so the real range they need to cover is 100 kPa to 220kPa.

It looks like Freescale Semiconductor makes some absolute pressure sensors with a 20–250 kPa range (for example, the MPXH6250AC6T1), which is just about right for us.  They run on 5 v and provide a ratiometric output, that we should be able to read to 10 bits of precision, or about 0.25 kPa, which would be a depth resolution of 1 inch. The accuracy of the pressure sensors is only ±1.5% of 250kPA, which is ±3.75kPa, ±15in, or ±38cm.   They get full points if they are within 50cm, so this is accurate enough for us.  The could calibrate to higher accuracy, by lowering the machine at the side of a pool while looking at a ruler or tape measure along the side of the pool and taking measurements.  So, now that I know what is needed, I can have the robotics club try to solve the design problems.

I think I will have to do one more thing for them, though—the pressure sensor is a surface-mount component, so I think that they will need a breakout board for it.  I’ll design a breakout board that has room for some bypass capacitors and an output filter capacitor.  Although surface-mount, the part has 0.05″ pitch leads sticking out, and so should be hand solderable, though it might be worthwhile to get a heat gun and solder paste to try reflow soldering.

Come to think of it, since the pressure sensor will be glued to the side of the drybox, it might be a good idea to mount the 3-axis accelerometer on the same board.  That would reduce the amount of cabling they need to do.  But the ADXL335 chip has the SMD pads underneath the chip, which can’t be easily hand-soldered.  That brings up the question of whether we try soldering with a heat gun or toaster oven, or pay $12 more for the chip already on a breakout board. (The DigiKey breakout board is the same price and a similar design to the LadyAda  breakout board—both are copying the ridiculously overpriced breakout board from Analog Devices.)

I could play around with a few different designs and stick them on my next PC board run—I want to do a revised version of the HexMotor board anyway, and it won’t cost any more to toss in some sensor boards on the same fab run.