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Wiring Up

Got all four drivers wired to the perfboard power rails and the motors connected. Immediately blew a fuse. The Nano setup took longer than I expected. The factory image hung on boot, so I flashed JetPack 4.6.6 fresh from a microSD, forgot the password, flashed again.

The Jetson Nano has no software PWM, but it does have two hardware PWM channels on pins 32 and 33, disabled by default. I found this in someone's blog. The fix is running jetson-io.py to enable them. Once that was done, the first motor spun immediately.

Two PWM channels isn't enough for four motors, so I moved to a PCA9685. It talks to the Nano over I2C on pins 3 and 5, and I ran a PWM signal line from each of its 16 channels to the drivers. For the Nano's power I'm building a 5V pack from 18650 cells in parallel through an XL6009 boost converter.

Top-down view of the rover chassis with four mecanum wheels, motors, and perfboard The rover assembled with the Jetson Nano mounted and all four drivers wired Jetson Expansion Header Tool with hardware PWM enabled on pins 32 and 33

Picking Up an Old Project

I'm picking up an old project I've restarted a couple of times: my 4-wheel rover. The first build ran two L298N dual drivers on regular wheels and a plastic chassis. That one got stolen. The replacement uses TB9051FTG drivers, mecanum wheels, and a metal chassis.

The motors run off two 3.7V LiPo batteries with a blade fuse soldered onto the positive line and XT30s on the ends. That's as far as I've gotten. I need to keep ordering parts, and it's turning into an expensive robot.

XL6009 boost converter and 18650 batteries in their holders