motor driver

Hello

   I've built a Parallax Boe-Bot which has servo driven wheels but have decided to move to Arduino and dc motors. I do not have specific motors in mind yet just some salvaged ones to play with for now. So my questions are:

1 - Is it worth getting a driver shield/kit or should I save the money and try something like a l293d on my breadboard?

2 - What shield/board do you recommend? I was considering the following:

  Does anybody know of a nice fitting heatsink for the L298N chip?  I know Digikey has a ton of heatsinks, but I am interested in the specific part numbers of heatsinks that LMR users have had positive experiences with.

  I know a lot of people just use salvaged heatsinks, but thats not really an option for me.  Any help would be greatly appreciated!

As my username indicates I have many questions, I am very new to electronics, but I've done enough building/tinkering to feel comfortable attempting a fairly ambitions project... a very unconventional cuckoo clock. The first and most basic challenge I have is to have a motor turn 180 degrees very slowly, then back 180 at the same speed or faster. This would happen on the hour and involve additional actions such as door flaps opening and then closing, as well as sound to sync with the action. 

I am thinking of building a robot and I need help choosing a microcontroller and motor driver(s). I was thinking of something like the Arduino, Axon II, Motoruino, or Orangutan SVP-328. Something with a USB programming interface would be nice. The robot I intend on making should have about drive 3+ servos, 2 motors/motor driver (maybe with encoders), two ultrasonic rangefinders, LCD, and maybe some other sensors (buttons, gyros, etc). Any other microcontrollers you could suggest would be helpful. 

Hey

My brother and I have been working on building a propeller clock and have salvaged two old harddiskdrive motors for the project. Our knowledge with these BLDC motors is very limited though and we are not sure how to build our own driver circuit.

The first motor has 3 leads and while the PCB from that harddisk is fried now, I did get the opportunity to take some measurements. Between one of the leads and the two others I measured a 7V and a 12V squarewave at 3.4kHz.

Dear LMR,

http://www.robotshop.com/ca/pololu-dual-dc-motor-driver-1a-4-5v-3-5v-tb6612fng-2.html

hi,

the weight of my robot is 12-14kg.....i am having a serious problem in selecting motors...

motors must must have good rpm

must have torque 

must  have feedback (for differential drive , positioning and controlling)

must have power to drive 12-14kg.....

plz provide me guidance.......... 

hi i have got a ping sensor , arduino duemilanove and a motor h bridge how ever i need help programming i need the sensor to tell the motor to turn when it gets too close say 5cm close to a object

thanks for all the help

rhys

I've tried looking around a bit and expect this to be a fairly basic question, but nonetheless I still can't get it to work. Basically I have an arduino connected to a SN754410 motor driver powering a lego motor. This all works fine until I try to use a second power supply (9V battery in this case) instead of the arduino's 5V output. Here's the current setup:

Note that the arduino is running off of USB power.

Hi, LMR!

I need some help with troubleshooting Mr. Basic Motor Driver board. Basically, I couldn't make it work. I use 4xAA Alkaline batteries [5.8V actual voltage] as power supply. MC Picaxe 18X. Relays are working fine, but Motors are not. With my little experience in electronics I guess BD681 does not open for some reason. But not sue, I might be wrong...

My setup:

Troubleshooting done:

Hello LMR!

I built a motor driver, look: 

Cool isnt it? Of course it doesn't work as intended, but hopefully you guys can help me fix that. Lets take a look at the details first, and afterwards my problem.

I am quite new to the world of robotics, but have years of experience with basic passive components (caps, resistors, etc) so I thought this would be a fun way to start learning more.

 To start myself off, I picked up a handful of arduino clones, mostly seeeduinos.   I built some motor shields and got those programmed, and working successfully with some cheap hobby motors, I've also successfully managed to get some servo's running without a problem as well.

Hello, i'd like to have some small driver/controller like the L293D or similar, but that can run motors at variable speed. Does it exists ? A small and cheap board would be ok.

If it doesn't, how could it be built ?

Thanks :P

When writing this, LMR only offers "Start here" - instructions on how to make your first robot, using Picaxe.

"Nebster" wrote to me, and asked if I could do a parallel, using Arduino, and I think that is actually a very good idea (now that Picaxe refuses to pay me commission, haha)

Focus should be on making first timers get a robot up and running at a low cost, and most importantly learn how to hook up motors, a servo, and a analogue input in "no time".

Hi,

As many of you know, my experiences building robots have been painful at best. So, I'm taking a step back, and I will follow Frits's wonderful tutorial.

Because I live in America, I'd prefer to buy my parts from a U.S.-based site to avoid longer shipping time,additional fees, etc.

I've run into a problem: Frits's tutorial calls for 1 L293D Motor driver. At mouser.com I found a short list of products similar to what I need.

Which will work?: