{"id":16540,"date":"2017-03-03T10:28:25","date_gmt":"2017-03-03T09:28:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.recantha.co.uk\/blog\/?p=16540"},"modified":"2017-03-03T10:32:22","modified_gmt":"2017-03-03T09:32:22","slug":"new-pi-borg-robotic-kickstarter-is-a-monster-and-a-very-nice-monster-at-that","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.recantha.co.uk\/blog\/?p=16540","title":{"rendered":"New Pi Borg robotic Kickstarter is a Monster – and a very nice Monster at that!"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Pi Borg<\/a>, the Cambridgeshire-based robotics specialist, has just launched their latest Kickstarter<\/a>, and it’s a bit of a monster!<\/p>\n

There are two parts to the campaign<\/a> (both of which are pictured above): the ThunderBorg motor controller and the MonsterBorg four-wheeled robot.<\/p>\n

The ThunderBorg is a 5A dual motor controller. It has\u00a0on-board voltage monitoring, an RGB LED, a built in DC-DC converter (allowing you to use power supplies from 7V to 36V), and is just larger than a Raspberry Pi Zero. It allows control of speed via PWM and works in forward and reverse directions. From the campaign text:<\/p>\n

It controls 2 DC motors per board and has a powerful 5 amp per motor continuous rating.\u00a0 Each board will alternatively control a 4 wire stepper.\u00a0You can drive more than 2 motors by connecting motors in parallel or adding more ThunderBorgs in a daisy chain.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It has various protection features on-board including\u00a0over-current protection, short circuit protection, over temperature protection and under-voltage lockout. Here it is in close-up:<\/p>\n

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The second part of the campaign is a four-wheeled, off-roadable robot called the MonsterBorg with the following features:<\/p>\n