Skid steering rover recommendations

Pixhawk
1

I’m going to build a boat with differential steering soon using a Pixhawk 4 and Arupilot. In order to get familiar with the hardware and software I thought I would first build a rover, easier to chase it around a parking lot than a lake if something goes wrong. As the boat will be differential steering I want to use a skid steer rover but not sure which one, and is track or wheel better.

I have seen the Devastator by DFRobot, looks like a good one, reasonably priced. Most videos I’ve seen use the L298N motor driver, can I use that with a Pixhawk. If not, or I’m sure it would be better with ESC’s, would like to swap out the brushed motors for brushless but that might not really be necessary.

So that’s what I’m looking for recommendations for a rover platform using differential steering.

Thanks
John

2

Hi,
Definitely, you can use the L289 motor driver for a skid rover or boat. In fact, you can use most of the brushed DC motor drivers for this purpose. Be sure to configure the DIR pin of the motor driver to aux channels. For L289, it is quite straightforward. Just connect them to main channels.

3

Thanks for the info, I haven’t got back to this yet, to many other projects going on, but it’s still something I would like to work with.

Thanks again
John