I now have the honor introducing the next moteus controller to the mjbots product line, the moteus-r5:

The moteus-r5 is the spiritual successor to the wildly popular moteus-r4, first released all the way back in 2020. The moteus-r5 takes all that we’ve learned about motor control in the intervening 6 years, and applies it to the same size, voltage, and output current class.

Comparisons

When I compared the moteus-r5 to the moteus-r4 above, I do mean “class”, because the moteus-r5 improves on the r4 across most of those axes, along with improving robustness, IO, and hall effect compatibility. The rough breakdown:

I’ve got another very short post today, a new product announcement, the XT90H-M from AMass:

This is an XT90H-M, which mates to the XT90F-S that was already carried. It does not mate to any mjbots products directly, but can be handy if you are building harnessing in a system.

Here’s a small new addition to the mjbots product portfolio, the mjuart - a FT231X breakout board, now available at mjbots.com.

This USB to 3.3V level UART adapter includes appropriate cables to connect to all of the possible auxiliary ports on each moteus controller:

• moteus-r4 ABS: A ZH4 to ZH4 cable with RX/TX swapped
• aux1: A ZH4 to GH8 cable
• aux2: A ZH4 to GH7 cable

The FT231X can communicate without problems at up to 3 Mbps, which lets you capture high rate debug information from a moteus controller. It also works just fine with the yet-to-be-announced UART based control at its default baud rate of 921600 (or up to 3Mbps if you like living on the edge).

The first public version of moteus-r4 was announced way back in 2019. Since that time, there have been many new board variants and innumerable additional features and capabilities. Amazingly, through all of that, the CAN-FD wire protocol has actually remained backwards compatible the entire time! It is still possible to monitor that very first moteus with tview, and to command it using the register protocol with appropriate configuration. Many projects hem and haw about releasing a version 1.0 of their software, justifying breaking things from a users perspective over and over again. Here, we’ve actually maintained nearly complete backwards compatibility despite having a pure time based release versioning scheme.

mjbots.com now stocks PWM controlled cooling fans with RPM sense and mounting brackets that are compatible with the moteus-r4, moteus-n1, and moteus-x1. Check them out here:

Read on to see how much these can improve the performance of your system and what configuration options are available.

This post will be short and sweet. https://mjbots.com now stocks mating solder cup MR30 and MR60 connectors:

• MR30 store links: Female / Male
• MR60 store links: Female / Male

As their name implies, MR30 are good for 30A peak (15A continous) and MR60 are rated for 60A peak (30A continuous). They have their own built in strain relief attachment, so no heatshrink is necessary during cable construction. Since moteus controllers have no connectors for motor phase wires, these can be used inline if you need to frequently disconnect and reconnect motors. We use them all the time here and figured that you might as well!

I’m excited to announce the release of the newest moteus motor controller, the moteus-x1!

The biggest differences between the moteus-x1 and other moteus controllers is improved output phase current capacity. The x1 is rated for 25A continuous output phase current with no cooling and 60A continuous with fan based cooling. The other big improvement are 12V fan output pads with PWM support. Supporting high power cooling helps the x1 to achieve its higher output current rating.

We’ve got a new firmware release for the moteus controllers up on github now, 2024-10-29! This update has a few new capabilities, a brief summary is below, while more detailed posts will come in the not too distant future:

MA600 Support: The MA600 from Monolithic Power Systems is an absolute magnetic encoder that uses a TMR (precision tunnel magnetoresistance) sensor. It is much more accurate with less noise than the AS5047P that moteus uses (or the MA732).

It’s another new product day here at mjbots! Introducing the mjpower-ss:

This provides many of the same functions as the power_dist r4.5b:

• Pre-charge: High capacitance, low-impedance loads up to 4000uF will be safely turned on in a controlled manner.

• Undervoltage and overcurrent protection: If the instantaneous current exceeds 100A, a soft circuit breaker is engaged.

• Connector multiplexing: 1x XT90 input feeds 6x XT30 output connectors which are wired in parallel.

• External switch: An external illuminated switch is supported, with the same connector and pinout as for the power_dist. A switch harness can be purchased separately.

I’m excited to announce the newest addition to the moteus line of BLDC controllers, the moteus-c1! The moteus-c1 is a smaller, lower power, lower cost version of the moteus-r4 and moteus-n1, but still packs a big punch.

The top of the line performance metrics for the entire moteus lineup now look like:

The upshot is that for low current motors where RS422 is not required, it is nearly as capable as the moteus-n1 for less than half the price!