Cytron Technical Forum

Hello,
I am building a RC lawn tractor and using the MD30C for the steering motor controller. Main power is 24V DC. Steering motor is 24V 1/4 HP DC gearmotor. Since the Radio stuff is not yet ready, I have the board set up to use onboard PWM and have brought the 'A' and 'B' switch wires out to some external switches. The prototype appeared to work fine, for about 30 seconds of -very- short (<<<1sec) jogs of the steering switches. I was able to control the steering left and right, although the fixed PWM frequency setting I was using (from the onboard pot) left the motor a little sluggish. Then it just died. The green pwr led is lit (although it looks a little weak) but the board is unresponsive, even to the onboard 'A' or 'B' switches. I did not see or hear any 'smoke' events and cannot see what I could have done wrong to kill this board. Has anyone else seen something like this?

I did notice there appears to be a 7812 voltage regulator on the board. I have not yet tried to measure an output voltage for that.

Any suggestions of what could have caused this?

Is a schematic available?

Thanks in advance,

Russ

As a followup, there seems to be no output from U1, the 7812 regulator. But it is heating up really fast, even with no motor or switches attached. A nearby capacitor (47uf?), -not- the big input filter cap, a smaller one near an inductor, also seems to be heating up fast.

Are you using a battery or power supply to power up the motor driver?
Can you please take a clear picture showing how everything is wired up?

I'm sorry that the schematic cannot be disclosed due to the design is proprietary and it's not open-source.
If it's still under the 12-months warranty period, please contact support@cytron.io.

Thanks.