06/05/2024, 11:40 Creating a Smart-controlled Turntable Driver : 9 Steps - Instructables

Creating a Smart-controlled Turntable Driver

By Marc_Escobaem in CircuitsElectronics

Introduction: Creating a Smart-controlled Turntable Driver

This Instructable is part of a series of Instructables. Their goal is building up a complete DIY turntab
le.
The other Instructables are about

• Designing a preamplifier for the audio signal: RIAA conform preamp

• Build up the hardware: DIY turntable build-up

A very important part of this instructable - a micro controller controllable voltage source for driving t
he motor - is covered by another intructable: light controlled voltage source

This project will cover the following topics:

What are the possibilities to drive a turntable. This leads to a build up of a complex driving circuitry
with a micro controller implementation and a high level controlling circuit with two feedback loops. A
ll will end up in a complete build up and implementing of the final version into the already existing tu
rntable from the former project.

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Step 1: Short Discussion: Possible Drivers

The driver, of course, is an electrically driven motor. But there are possible differences between the
driver configuration and the choice of a possible motor. Motors for turntable have a need of two or
more different speeds. At least the turntable shall spinning with 33 1/3 rpm or 45 rpm with a few +/-
rpm adjustment.

I dont like these common-or-garden units [rpm] but they are way more handy than Hertz for this cas
e.

Turntables are either belt driven or direct driven devices:

DIRECT DRIVE: Direct driven motors, as the name states, are directly driven by the motor. That m
eans, that the physical power, coming from the motor, is directly transfered to the speed of the turnt
able. As you can image, this has a need for really smooth and silent operating motors. This comes t
ogether with a high price of the motor.

This is always a balancing act between smooth and stable rotating of the turntable and quality/price
of the motor.

One can circumvent these problems by using a translator between motor and the turntable axis - id
eally this translator has mechanical filter characteristics to smooth the speed to a constant drive.

BELT DRIVEN: The motor is normally connected to a belt, through which it drives the actual turntab
le. This method is criticized because of the belt. It can either slip or stretch, which results in differen
t (or no) speed of the turntable. As you can image, this leads to an unlinear driving speed and an u
nwanted varying of the speed of sound.

But we can use this stretching of the belt as a favour in our system. One the one hand, this can be t
he part which translates the energy from the motor to the turntable, on the other hand the streching
of the belt attenuates aprupt speed changes down to a lower level. This smoothing is the result of a
mechanical variation of a lowpass filter, resulting out of the stretching of the belt and the mass of th
e turntable. Thats why we prefer a bigger mass in case of belt driven systems.

I know this is always a topic of big discussions. You can find direct drive systems every now and th
en even in HiFi systems. From my point of view, putting in a lowpass filter in a system like this isnt
a bad thing and slipping or streching of the belt, which is the most critical point i think, can be avoid
ed with a proper design of the mechanics and the circuitry.

Since this is already the start of our design phase, I have to remember my requirements for a fitting
principle of driving my turntable - my main requirements are a very high quality sound and a low sp
eed.

to make long story short: Of course, it would be possible to build up a system with a direct drive, bu
t i thing that belt driven systems can work very well, especially if they are used with a higher turntab
le mass.

--> A beld driven system seems to fit to my requirements in the best possible way for me.

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Step 2: The Right Motor

I used many old parts from an old turntable for my build-up in this instructable, however the motor is
driven by the mains and i already have the requirement of a DC driven device - most likely in the ra
nge of my amplifier with 12Vdc raw voltage or 10Vdc regulated voltage.

The speed regulation is an important factor in this case. The speed has to be very stable at 33 1/3
or 44 rpm to get the sound we want.

Exact speed can be achieved by the use of a stepper motor, but this motors are a little bit rough in
velocity and are in need of a driving circuitry (e.g. µC + H-bridge). I made some experiments with a
stepper motor and my turntable and, next to the fact that I only had one shitty stepper with a too lar
ge stepsize, the velocity wasnt that precise to justify the extra amount of circuitry. Unfortunately this
experiments left an ugly hole in my base plate behind.

When we want to drive the system with a linear motor, we need some kind of control circuitry. We h
ave to measure the actual speed of the turntable and convert this information to a proper speed of
our motor.

The linear motor must work in the range of 0V to 10V (max. 12V) - with a maximum current approx.
given by the mains adapter with 700mA (without current consumption of the lin. voltage regulator).

This voltage shall be high enough for our need of speed (voltage = rpm) and this current shall be hi
gh enough for the needed torque (current = torque). If the torque doesnt fit, we still have a gear rati
o between the motor and the turntable due to the belt. The motor speed is also depending on this g
ear ratio. The motor speed again comes together with noise and vibration of the base plate. You se
e, this is a thing which needs testing and try and error.

After a while of searching the internet, basements of friends and so on and so forth, i found a DC m
otor, which seems to fit my requirements. It has to ball bearrings in the inside which can guarantee
a smooth run. I used a former gear wheel as a pulley, connected both and tried the first run - you c
an see it on the picture above. I connected a hook, made of soldered copper wire, to the motor to a
void belt slipping.

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Step 3: The Gearing and Measured Motor Characteristics

The gearing is achieved by the two pulleys (the bigger one around the turntable axis and the smalle
r one around the motor axis). The gearring ratio can be calculated by dividing both diameters, whic
h solved to a ratio of 1:13 - 13 rpm of motor speed results in 1 rpm of turntable speed.

The testing with the motor shows, that it can only handle speeds above a certain limit in combinatio
n with the beld due to the static friction - this limit is at approx. 2.5sec/round == 24rpm of the turnta
ble. Since this is lower than our minimal speed of 33 1/3, this should be a sufficient gearing.

In my case, the motor is mainly voltage controlled (controlling speed) . The current is the same for
static loads, which is always the case for a turntable.

The voltage ranges are between 3V for 24rpm and 6V for about 100rpm. This range is sufficient for
controlling the motor and 6V are enough to speed it up to the wanted speed.

The motor will automaticalls increasy the current with higher load. Stopping the motor at 6V leads t
o currents around 300mA, which is the current limit for me from now on.

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Step 4: Basic Control Circuit

We dont simply use the motor and control its speed by controlling the voltage. This may works for s
ome projects with high tolerances in speed, but definately not in my case. As it is usually done in sp
eed controlling circuits, i use a second motor as a voltage generator, which is driven by the same b
elt (as it is shown in the second pic).

One can see on the picture above, in my 3-6V range the motor generates voltages between 300mV
and 1000mV in the important range, but up to 1200mV at 6V control voltage (look on the multimete
r).

Of course it is possible to use this voltage in an analog circuitry and control the motor in this way, b
ut to bring more flexibility in my circuit i want to use a micro controller. For the first trials i used an A
TMEGA328 on an Arduino. Since the analog parts from the arduino can handle voltages between 0
-5V (10bit), our control voltage has to be amplified. I used a simple LM358 as an noninverting ampli
fier with an approximated gain of 5. This leads to an amplification up to 5V in the important speed r
ange (up to ca 80rpm). My motor uses internally brushes to get the voltage to the changing coils. T
his leads to sparkling effects which create high frequency noise on my signal. To get rid of this typic
al noise, I implemented a highpass filter of 3rd order. The cut off frequencies are at 80Hz, 35Hz and
3Hz, i simply used resistors and capacitors which are available, but pay attention that it is above 1-
2Hz, depends of expected changes in speed.

When you use motors in combination with transistors as switches or similar, please have in mind th
at a running motor can cause high currents if the switch is closed and the motor is still moving. That
s why diodes are normally implemented as so called catch or freewheel diodes.

As i already mentioned, the motor needs voltages between 3-6V to run my turntable in a proper wa
y. This voltage has to be controlled by the Atmega as well, which has an 8bit analog output.

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My instructable about a light controlled voltage source handles exactly this problem. For those who d
ont want to read that: long story short, i used the PWM signal from the Atmega, to brighten and dim
a LED, which controls a resistor and therefore the outputvoltage of an LM317. This leads to a linear
control of the voltages between 3 and 6 Volt with digital values between 20 and 255 (the first twenty
arent used, because they higher the maximum voltage above 6V). This is also shown in the display
print picture. The voltage source is shown above where you can see the green LED and LDR comb
ination as well. The perfboard also contains the amplifying circuit for the speed signal from the gen
erator. The whole circuitry - LM317 as light controlled voltage source and amplifier - arent really co
mplex and easy to build up for my first tests.

There are also the input pins marked with typical arduino declaration: A0 is the first analog_read pi
n, pin9 stays for one PWM output (digital pin number nine).

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Step 5: Basic Software Aka First Trials

Since we have now a sensor for measuring a voltage with a linear behaviour to the rotationspeed a
nd a motor, both connected to a MCU (microcontroller unit), we can implement a simple control loo
p in C language.

At first, the measured speed values are filtered with a ten point moving average filter (additionally t
o the analog filters).

The LED indicator for too high speed is given by:

if (sensorValue <= 20) { digitalWrite(led, HIGH); } //turn LED on, if speed is too high

else { digitalWrite(led, LOW); }

The motor control code is given by:

// controller for the motor linearity

if (sensorValue > speedValue) { fadeValue=fadeValue-1; }

//fadeValue is the value, fading the LED and therefore varying the motor control voltage

else if (sensorValue < speedValue) { fadeValue=fadeValue+1; }

if (fadeValue<=20) { fadeValue=20; }

else if (fadeValue>255) { fadeValue=255; } }

This is a strange kind of p-controller (with no proportionality to the mismatch value), which works, b
ut not very properly. One main disadvantage is, that it isnt really fast and starts to swing, like the da
ta plot shows. Another point is, that i dont know the exact measured speed_value, which i have to r
each, to end up with exact 33 1/3 rpm. I approximated values in this step, which arent correct. Wha
t you else can see, is that the filter didnt remove the noise. Thats why i have do redesign the filters
as well.
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The third picture shows the generator speed on top and the control voltage at the bottom.

This problems have to be solved from now on in the following steps, by:

1. new calculation of the filters

2. measure the systems important data
3. use that as a base for calculating a PID controller

4. adding additional sensors, which measure the rotation speed by measuring the time between
marked points on the turntable

To my favour, i implemented an MCU, with which i can handle the whole controlling and its changes
in a digital way.

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Step 6: New Schematic and Blockdiagram Pt.I

The first picture shows the new Filters. I reduced it to 2 filters, both with cut off frequencies lower th
an 1Hz. This give high time constants to our loop system, but remember that this whole thing is onl
y about a slow rotation and a not fast moving system.

now we got that, we take care about the PID controlling. At first, picture the whole system as a bloc
k diagram, which is shown.

The loop has to be opened, and the step responce must be recorded (in my case, with an arduino).
The step was created by the arduino sending out a PWM signal. The response shows a PT2 behav
iour (nearly PT1). Calculating the time constants and gains (typical methods using the tangent at th
e highest slope) lead to K=0.78 Tu=1114ms and Tg=1870ms. For more information regarding this,
visit this, which is unfortunately in german.

Using standard calculations after Chien/Hrones/Reswick, we end up with the control values Kp=0.7
55, Ki=0.336 and Kd=0.421. Ta being the time between to samples. Since i use an micro controller,
this is lost time i have to incorporate in the calculations.

This can now be implemented in the standard algorithm of an PID controller:

e = w - x; //comparison
esum = esum + e; //Integration

y = Kp*e + Ki*Ta*esum + Kd/Ta*(e – ealt); //controlling

ealt = e;

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Step 7: PID Controller

The first PID controller, which used the calculated values, showed a good but not awesome behavi
our during my tests. I experimented just a little bit, and endet up with Ki=Kp=2, and a small Kd=0.2
(first picture). This leads to a lower change from my motor voltage to smal changes but a big reacti
on from the controller to big changes (second picture). These abrupt changes, which are responsibl
e for the faster controlling, have also one negativ: the motor goes into "full power" and the turntable
has one main overshoot. This is not important, if the turntable is used properly, since it should only
run with the same speed or turned on and of with buttons. But if i hold it with my finger, it speeds u
p. This can be avoided by limiting the maximum motor control speed to approx 80% via the softwar
e.

The D part from my controller is also visible at the LED from my light controlled voltage source, bec
ause it causes a flickering.

I tried alot with varying the constants, but either the system is slow, or it has a big overshoot. The c
onstants, i presented you at last seemed to be the best for my purpose, since its more important for
me to reach my 33 1/3 as fast as possible, than reaching it slowlier with no overshoot. The slow rea
ction from the controller is on the one hand a software issue, on the other hand it is a result from m
y high time constants due to the high capacitances in the backfeeding loop.

If i change my mind, i can simply it in my firmware.

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Step 8: Additional Time Measurement

Even changing speed values can be reached in a more or less fast way, but how fast the turntable
exactly is, cannot be determined till now. It is possible to exactly measure the voltage per rpm from
my generator. Since i use very small rotationrates, the generated motor voltage varies a lot over tim
e and another negative is that i am not able to measure the voltage/rpm in a accurate way.

Thats why i implement another additional sensortype, a light barrier, to measure the exact time bet
ween one rotation. The circuitry is relatively simple: i use a LED and a LDR in an transistor circuitry,
working as a switch. If the led light can reach the ldr, the voltage increases at the base pin from my
transistor, which is feeded with 5 volts at the collector. This leads to switching 5volts off and on, eve
rytime the ldr is illuminated.

The pin is connected to the digital pin of my micro controller, giving a low state, each time the ldr is
illuminated - which meas each time the rotating plate of the turntable have one whole rotation.

Since this means a sampling rate of one measurement in 1.8 seconds (in case of 33 1/3 rpm), i add
ed more of this circuits around the rotating plate, which leads to 4 measurements in one rotation. D
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ue to that, the measument of a new value is delayed with 1/4*current rotation speed.

The rest is done in software: the time between two low states is measured. it should be exactly 1.8
seconds. The control deviation is calculated an a P controller correct the values.

Step 9: The All Over System

The all over system looks like shown above and is still highly experimental. The actual system work
s pretty well. The rotation speed is measured and the p controller gives a new value for the pid cont
rolling two the second control system. The speed of rotation is generally exactly around 33 1/3 rpm,
which was the main goal of this project, but it is still in a developing process.

this video shows the driving turntable and the voltage source, with a flickering led which indicates t
he controlling.

I will add steps to this and other instructables, to complete it.

There will be a more complex circuitry and a PCB board designed. I will implement a automation m
echanism to short circuit the generator, if the turntable speed is to high. This will lead to a damping
due to its self induction, which will act like a break. This is a good possibility to lower the overshoot.

Another important point, is that i want to implement a stand alone microcontroller, without any ardui
no stuff. Thats why i will implement a Atmega328 with my written software in the next weeks.

If your have comments or are interested in more informations/the software/etc., feel free to contact
me.

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