Motor controller

Community General Discussions
1

So I bought this motorcontroller: http://www.pololu.com/catalog/product/713/resources and I plan to use it with a picaxe 18 M2.

I powered the entire system with a 9V battery, I made all the connections needed, including a led indicator that is connected to the positive terminal of the 9V battery, and I also have put a 5V regulator for the picaxe chip. The problem I have is that when I connect the "vmot" to the 9V positive terminal, the led turns off and when I check the voltage between "vmot" and the ground, my multimeter shows 0 V. 

I'm not sure, but I think this is happening because of the battery, maybe I should have put 4 AA batteries. If not, what did I do wrong?

2

since there are no stupid

since there are no stupid questions here - i have a somewhat similar question, but my thought is to use a 12VDC LiFePo4 battery pack, 4S1P configuration hooked up to a DC/DC converter, 12vdc to 9vdc…

Would there be a problem with that set up - my reason for asking is for a special project that i have not introduced yet, but i will in a new thread…

3

Seems like

it is a problem. I tried with 3 AA batteries and it still does not work. After checking my multimeter, it looks like the “vmot” pin of the motorcontroller is actually a gnd terminal. kinda strange. When I connect it to the + terminal, there are sparks and the 5V regulator gets hot.