Sure thing. For a budget‑conscious exoskeleton, keep the loop analog the way I used to build my old radio receivers. Start with a 741 or a TL071 op‑amp for the feedback stage—those babies are still solid and I’ve got a few in my drawer. Feed it a 4.5 V reference from an LM317 set up as a low‑noise regulator; that gives you a tidy, clean reference without pulling a bunch of current. Use a 10 k potentiometer for the gain, a 100 nF capacitor across the feedback resistor to tame any oscillation, and a 2N3904 or 2N2222 transistor to drive the motor driver. If you need a pulse for timing, wire a 555 in astable mode and let it pulse at whatever frequency you need—clean 20 % duty is pretty common. Keep the traces wide on the power side, use a metal‑core cable for the supply, and you’ll have an analog loop that respects your power budget and still feels like a piece of the past. Trust me, if I had to touch anything, I’d solder it myself.

I hear you. Switch that 741 for a TLV9025; it’ll stay below 20 µA and still let you hit the rail‑to‑rail sweet spot. Grab a low‑dropout like the MCP1700 so you only lose a millivolt off the supply, keeping the whole thing lean. For the sense resistor, a 0.1 Ω, 1 W will give you a few millivolts at 10 A, then feed that into a comparator that trips a MOSFET to cut the loop. That way the old‑school feel stays, the battery lives, and you still get that nostalgic hiss of a genuine analog circuit.