ROS and ADC/DAC Hardware

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Hi,

This isn't exactly relevant to your meat of your question, but it is relevant to the title of your question... so I hope it might be useful to others who search for you question.

I've recently put together a ROS wrapper for using the Sensoray 626. You can find it here: http://www.ros.org/wiki/sensoray626.

This is a low level analog and digital I/O board, that includes motor encoder capabilities so you could use it to write your own motor controller.

--Will

does anyone have recommendations for library and/or hardware choices for motor controllers under ROS?

The Care-o-Bot robot has motors controlled by the CAN protocol (Control Area Network). There is a ros package but isn't easy to use because you need to know your motor parameters to set up an INI file, and sometimes its aren't known.

I'm using the FAULHABER MCDC3003 drive motor and for now a simple Serial-CAN converter so I don't need any additional library (I'm not using the cob_base_drive). BUT, it isn't a cheap solution. Motor + MCDC3003 costs +- $500

Finally, I am guessing here, you don't have to be worried about the latency when you work with analogical signals because its physic nature is slower than your control loop.