Yeh I had the same issue. I got one of those pololu serial ones, but can’t make the thing work. pololu and dimension engineering both make more expensive and powerful ones that operate on PWM, but they are prolly overkill for smaller bots. I think the best choice is the solarbotics one frits posted about a little while ago, but it’s a kit, you have to solder it together. Honestly it would be pretty hard to get much done with NO soldering. The best I can figure is to just have to do simpler soldering, kits made with all through-hole parts.
I am tempted to try and make a better one, and have PCB’s made and start assembling and selling them myself. Or maybe just horde them for my army of tiny robotic minions. Either one will do.
Remember, dear member of LMR; If you want to start a business, we will support you! And you can get all the exposure that LMR can offer, for free. That’s membership benefit
We are not afraid of supporting members businesses 110%, as long as it is obvious that you are a member because you are into robot building, and not because you want to sell stuff as the primary focus.
cool beans well i have given up, awe. its too hard and i think guibot would do a much better job because he has experience already. however when his tutorial comes out or whoevers i will have an arduino bot up and running.
It has a max PWM of of 10 kHz though, which is annoying to listen to. But for a on/off switching, or lower frequency it might be ok. Also, some of Pololus stuff has some soldering, so it might be good to email them to see if this is completely assembled, to be sure.
have to go to the site, then click the h-bridge button on the side (scroll down) to see NMIH-0010 (for 2 motors, 754410 based, 1 A), NMIH-0030 (for 1 motor, 3A, 2 kHz max PWM), NMIH-0050 (1 motor, 5 A) , D-Rex (2 motor, need male pins to interface, 7A)
Remember for all sites, to check availability and shipping costs before ordering.
while cruising you guys site, i found this thread… Arduino is my favorite controller… i currently have three bots all running on arduinos.
As for a the motor shield… you should check out ladyada’s at adafruit.com. I use it on all of my bots… you can get it as a kit to solder together or you can buy it preassembled.
If no one else writes a tutorial on a “budget” robot with arduino, i would be glad to help out. I have written several articles in the past, and one that is currently running on uchobby.com.
If anyone is interested in my writing a tutorial, give me a shout out.
Great site you have going here, nice to see this many people interested in the home robotics thing.
hey welcome and thanks for the offer. you can make a tutorial if you want but just wait till guibot has made his so that their not the same. i have not yet mastered (or familierised) my with the arduino and i would personally like tutorials to help reach the status.
Like fritsl said, no one will tell us who will make the first tutorial… we all are free to contribute!!
Please make yours if you feel so! I would be glad to see more than one also!!
And for the adafruit shield, I have one once, but unfortunatelly burned out due to a stupid mistake, witch turns out to be a happy accident because I figured a way to make my own motor controller board. And IMHO the adafruit shield has a small / big limitation, it gets all your digital pins, even if you only want to connect one motor and one servo, you can´t use your digital pins any more. You still have the 6 analog pins free to use, wich can limit your needs.
I think the good point with this shield is, easy to assemble, and very easy to use
I think you can actually, connect the wires to the 5v, and GND on the actual arduino board.
no need to go through the voltage controller.
i’m not so sure, but i think i read it somewhere.
but really, why wouldnt it work? the atmega uses 5v to work, all the voltage controller does, is change 7-12v into 5v, if you feed 5v directly, it should be fine, right?