Motor Board API

The kit can control multiple motors simultaneously. One Motor Board can control up to two motors.

Accessing the Motor Board

If there is exactly one motor board attached to your robot, it can be accessed using the motor_board property of the Robot object.

my_motor_board = robot.motor_board

Warning

If there is more than one motor board on your kit, you must use the motor_boards property. robot.motor_board will cause an error. This is because the kit doesn't know which motor board you want to access.

Motor boards attached to your robot can be accessed under the motor_boards property of the Robot. The boards are indexed by their serial number, which is written on the board.

my_motor_board = robot.motor_boards["SRO-AAD-GBH"]
my_other_motor_board = robot.motor_boards["SR08U6"]

Controlling the Motor Board

This board object has an array containing the motors connected to it, which can be accessed as motors[0] and motors[1]. The Motor Board is labelled so you know which motor is which.

my_motor_board.motors[0]
my_motor_board.motors[1]

Powering motors

Motor power is controlled using pulse-width modulation (PWM). You set the power with a fractional value between -1 and 1 inclusive, where 1 is maximum speed in one direction, -1 is maximum speed in the other direction and 0 causes the motor to brake.

my_motor_board.motors[0].power = 1
my_motor_board.motors[1].power = -1

These values can also be read back:

>>> my_motor_board.motors[0].power
1

>>> my_motor_board.motors[1].power
-1

Warning

Setting a value outside of the range -1 to 1 will raise an exception and your code will crash.

Warning

Sudden large changes in the motor speed setting (e.g. -1 to 0, 1 to -1 etc.) will likely trigger the over-current protection and your robot will shut down with a distinct beeping noise and/or a red light next to the power board output that is powering the motor board.

Special values

In addition to the numeric values, there are two special constants that can be used: BRAKE and COAST. In order to use these, they must be imported from the sbot module like so:

from sbot import BRAKE, COAST

BRAKE

BRAKE will stop the motors from turning, and thus stop your robot as quick as possible.

Note

BRAKE does the same as setting the power to 0.

from sbot import BRAKE

my_motor_board.motors[0].power = BRAKE

COAST

COAST will stop applying power to the motors. This will mean they continue moving under the momentum they had before.

from sbot import COAST

my_motor_board.motors[1].power = COAST