Articles

Field notes from the workbench.

Deep dives into the engineering behind precise machines — written by the people who build them.

From UART to EtherCAT: When a Robot Outgrows Serial Motor Control
EtherCAT16 min read

From UART to EtherCAT: When a Robot Outgrows Serial Motor Control

UART motor control is simple and useful until bus time, jitter, watchdogs, and multi-axis synchronization become the architecture. This field guide shows when to move to EtherCAT and how to map DS402 drives into ros2_control.

Designing the Power Stage Behind FOC
Electronics23 min read

Designing the Power Stage Behind FOC

FOC is usually explained as math, but the current loop only works if the power stage can switch cleanly, measure current honestly, and survive faults. This field guide connects the controller to a real half-bridge schematic, shunt, driver, bootstrap and protection hardware.

Connecting Your Motor Controller to ROS 2: Writing a ros2_control Hardware Interface
ROS 214 min read

Connecting Your Motor Controller to ROS 2: Writing a ros2_control Hardware Interface

Every ROS 2 tutorial stops where the robot begins. The missing piece is about 200 lines of C++: a hardware interface that turns your serial-connected motor controller into joints any ROS controller can drive, with the timing, units and watchdog details that decide whether it works.

How to Tune a PID Loop: A Field Guide
PID12 min read

How to Tune a PID Loop: A Field Guide

The procedure we actually use in the field: preparing the loop, three tuning methods that work, the implementation details that make or break them, and a symptom table for when it misbehaves.

Writing an FOC Controller from Scratch
FOC13 min read

Writing an FOC Controller from Scratch

The whole algorithm is forty lines built on one idea. Clarke, Park, two analytically tuned current loops, SVPWM, an annotated ISR, and the alignment gotchas that eat the first two weeks.

What It Really Takes to Make a Robot Move Precisely
Dynamics15 min read

What It Really Takes to Make a Robot Move Precisely

Why precise robot motion is an engineering achievement, not a spec you buy: dynamics, control laws and the real-world limits, explained with the math.

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