XL330 Motors not moving under load when controlled with the u2d2

[roboteer]

When you used your robot with the OpenRB-150, how did you power the 6 actuators? Via VIN(DXL) jumper and a wall-plugged power supply?

What kind of 5V battery are you using now to power the 6 DXLs? Phone battery type? Your battery may not have enough capacity to handle the current needed. Also you should try NOT to daisy chain more than 4 DXLs per chain. So try two parallel chains of 3 DXLs each chain and each chain with its own battery and see. You should be able to use 4 AA batteries per chain.

Or try these kind of Lithium battery. The higher the mAh rating the better.

Also there is another hardware design solution that you missed. As you already have an OpenRB-150, there is a way to make the 150 behaves like a mini U2D2 (up to 1 Mbps baud rate only) + as a DXL Power Hub, then you can control your DXLs directly from the PC also, please see this post:

OPEN-RB 150 ROS Interface

First I have never used ROS myself, but as far as OpenRB-150 is concerned, there is an example Arduino Sketch named “usb_to_dynamixel.ino” (available after you installed the OpenRB-150 in the regular Arduino IDE of course). Once you compiled and downloaded this sketch to the OpenRB-150, it will act like a “little brother” to the U2D2 but it can only go to 1 Mbps baud rate. [image] Then you can concentrate on installing and using DXL SDK + ROS on the Pi, which then just sees the OpenRB-150 as…

UPDATE 5/3/2025

I also found that this Power Setup using 2 NiMH Batteries in parallel (4.8 V each and 2200 mAh each) can power an OpenCM-904 and 6 XL-330s OK. However, 1 battery pack was not enough, so look for at least 4400 mAh for your battery solution.