using the BOE Shield

screwie

I have a question regarding this shield. I want to use it and its 5V power regulator to power small DC hobby motors. I'm wondering where to connect the two wires from the motor. Do they just go in one of the 10, 11, 12, 13 "servo" pins? PS: This is the Shield for the Arduino. Thanx

Mike Green

What do you want to do with the DC motors? In particular, do you want to be able to turn them on and off? Do you want to be able to reverse them? Do you want to be able to control the motors' speed? If you just want to continuously power them from the 5V supply, you can connect the motors to any points marked with +5V and ground. You can use the Red / Black marked pins on the servo connectors where Red is positive and Black is negative. Make sure the jumper is set to the 5V position and not Vin.

Remember that the 5V regulator can only supply 1A for everything including the Arduino board. Make sure the motors don't draw too much.

Martin_H

The Boe Shield is like the standard proto shield, except that it is engineered to fit on a Boe-bot and the breadboard is offset from the headers. The offset allows you to stack another shield on top of it and still have access to the breadboard which is really handy. I suspect that the regulator was added to the Boe shield to allow safe powering of servos since the Arduino requires over 7 volts input, so Vbat would be unsafe for many servos. This way you separate your Boe shield and Arduino power because each has their own regulator. This improves reliability of the robot.

To control the speed and direction of a DC motor you would want to buy either the Ardrumoto shield, the classic Arduino motor shield, or the Pololu motor controller Parallax sells. Relays can also be used, but that is more advanced.

screwie

Thank you Mr. Green,
I can see that I'll need a motor control shield to power beefier DC motors (not to mention H bridges for directional control).

Thanks Mr. H. for mentioning the bit about the available shields.