From John:
For our Power Wheels racing team, today the backup motor controller for use with a brushed motor arrived. Actually 3 of them arrived. I opened up and tested one today.
The controller has 4 of these FETs in it with a heat sink which attaches to the case (not pictured.) Hooking it up is pretty simple. I had to put a jumper on the ignition connector and used the 5V out from an Arduino sitting around and a potentiometer for the throttle. I got 24V from my power supply. I used a wall wort for the Arduino.
I hooked the output of the controller to a 12 Volt blower motor which is patiently waiting to be installed in one of my cars. We would use a motor controller like this with a 24V scooter motor or one of the 24V wheelchair motors we have, but I couldn’t get access to one of these tonight and I couldn’t wait to test this thing so I went with what I had. 🙂
This motor controller intentionally cuts out when battery voltage is less than around 20V to save the batteries. I didn’t have an oscilloscope handy tonight so I don’t know the frequency of the PWM.
Our intention is to use a motor controller Tom built instead of one of these controllers, but it is good to have options.
Enjoy my nice camera work: