I need to safely use 12 volt motors with an 5 volt arduino board

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1

hello and thank for viewing my question

i have purchased an elegoo smart robot car R3 however i am not using the body it came with i am using the electronics with a seperate body that i have created myself out of plastic weighing under 1kg, it is a 16 legged robot body designed to look like a black widow spider, the walking mechanism works fine, i used all of the original parts to start off with and it did walk and turn just fine, however more torque is required because i could hear the 4 motors stalling due to the amount of plastic gears in the walking mechanism, the motors were four 3.3 volt motors, i have brought two 12volt drills and have taken out the motors and the two 12volt lithium ion batteries, on the side of the motors it says they are 10.8v and the batteries are 12volts (i apologize i know more info is probably required this is my very first time asking a question so please let me know what more info is required) im not sure if i have a schematic of the elegoo smart robot car R3 but i will look more in depth for one if needed. i do however have a diagram of the wiring below

wire%20connect
wire%20connect3447×1974 325 KB

i need to make either a step up and step down circuit or use a bigger motor controller to handle the extra voltage (im currently using an L298N and it got slighly warm due to the motors slightly stalling when it was walking) however im not sure how to go about it and i dont want to waste my money. i fear that i will burn my components out (such as the bluetooth module, arduino board, motor shield, and line tracker etc, i basically just want to use 12 volt motors withe this same elegoo smart robot car, and program them at a fairly slow speed so i dont destroy the robot body walking mechanism, ive watched a few youtube videos but i still dont really understand how to wire it all up correctly and which parts i should buy, whether i should buy a better motor controller or make step up and step down circuit and where those step up step down circuits would go

this is one of the tutorials ive followed and probably the one that made the most sense to me

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rc892r–njw&t=1295s

please let me know what further info is needed and if you would like to see my hardware im currently using or the robot body that i built (i would have included it but new users can only upload one image) , and thank you again for viewing this question :slight_smile: i am very new to robotics but i really want to get this design to work safely without risk of burning out my parts or causing a fire, thank you again

2

I would pick up a proper controller that supports 12VDC.


4

thank you for your answer, but how could i connect this circuit up? because i have no idea

5

Hello @Nick_11, welcome to the community!

You would have to replace the L298N motor driver with the new one that supports 12V, you can follow the user guides to do the connection with the Arduino and the motors. And you can use the libraries the manufacturers provide (at least for both of the options bmoscato suggested) for the communication with the Arduino.

If you use the RoboClaw 2x15A, 6-34VDC Regenerative Motor Controller you could follow this guide:

And if you use the Sabertooth Dual 12A 6V-24V Regenerative Motor Driver you could use this tutorial as a guide.

I hope that information can help you out :grinning:

6

@geraldinebc15 you beat me to it… I was driving home from work! lol

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7

thank you so much for the help! :slight_smile: i will try this tutorial out and ill get back to you about it fingers crossed

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