Building a stackable motor driver shield for Arduino
Posted by Nick Johnson | Filed under busdriver-shield, i2c, avr, arduino
Hi, Hack a Day readers! If you're just looking for the source and schematics, they're here. Otherwise, read on!
Recently I've been working with embedded electronics a bit for a project I'm working on, using an Arduino. For the project, I need to control a number of low-power DC motors, and while there are plenty of solutions out there for driving one or two (or even three) like this, none of them let you drive as many motors as I need, and none of them are stackable, as they all require exclusive use of some IO lines. I could get several standalone driver boards like these, but I didn't much like the prospect of the ratsnest of wiring that would ensue. So, I decided to develop my own.
Before I go on, a brief aside about motor drivers. Motors can require a lot of power, so powering them directly from a microcontroller's IO pins is not practical. The obvious solution is to use a simple transistor, but in many cases, including mine, it's necessary to be able to drive the motor both forward and backwards, which isn't possible using a simple transistor ...