Regenerative braking broke my motion controller. Here’s how to protect yours (with schematics)

Regenerative braking sounds like the futuristic technology that we all need, but it’s not all sunshine and rainbows. Incorrectly configured, regenerative braking can result in devastating voltage spikes that destroy expensive equipment such as motion controllers.

In this video, we run a few experiments to demonstrate the effects of regenerative braking, and talk about a protection circuit that could save us from a trip to the electronics graveyard.

Sources mentioned in the video:
Jantzen Lee’s (@jtlee1108) video on regenerative braking:    • Optimal Regenerative Braking, Explain...  
Phil Frost’s explanation of regenerative braking: https://electronics.stackexchange.com...
Geckodrive’s returned energy dump circuit: https://www.geckodrive.com/support/re...
ODrive 3.5 schematics on GitHub: https://github.com/odriverobotics/ODr...

Chapters:
00:00 Introduction
00:16 What Happened
01:39 What is Regenerative Braking
04:18 Boost Converter
06:35 Regenerative Braking with Servo
07:53 Protection Circuits
08:35 Schematics
09:52 Protection Circuit Test
10:33 Conclusion