What is your favorite dual H-bridge motor driver?

Community General Discussions
1

I am looking to find out what motor drivers people like, so that I can try them with my RoboPi controller.

So far, I have tried driver boards based on:

- L9110S

- L293D

- L298N

- a Cytron 15A/channel discrete MOSFET board

I have, but have not tried yet

- Dagu "Mr. Basic" driver board

- Dagu 4 channel board for the Rover 5

- OEM 320A (I have serious doubts about the rating) driver

Which boards do y'all like, and why? Please give amp rating and price if possible, and links would be great too :)

Link to RoboPi: http://www.mikronauts.com/raspberry-pi/robopi/

2

You are right!

Thanks, I knew they were single channel, I should have specified in the post.

It’s great how small they are, I use one of those boards on one of my RoboPi testbeds as it is powerful enough for those small yellow gear motors.

3

I’ll check them out

Thanks Bajdi, I’ll take another look at them.

The only reason I like the L293D and L298 (especially the L293D) is that they are really easy to incorporate in a design.

Heck, the L293D is easy even for a prototype board!

4

Me goes with Bajdi

While I sometime do use the l293d and the l298, the voltage drop is too large. The Pololu TB6612FNG has been my all time favourite IC for powering small motors. (1.2 A comtinuous, 3 A max) 

http://www.pololu.com/product/713</p>

 

For more juice, I have tried out the Pololu VNH5019 Dual Motor Driver (12 A continuous, 30 A max or 30 A continous and 60 A max when single motor is connected to both channels).

http://www.pololu.com/product/2507

 

And last but not the least, it’s not a dual H-bridge driver, but have you seen the MC33887? It’s super feature-packed. I haven’t used it but am planning to in the coming days. ( 5A continuous, 7-8 A max, Fault status, Current Sensing, Sleep Mode )

http://www.freescale.com/files/analog/doc/data_sheet/MC33887.pdf

 

5

I’ll check them out

Thanks Enigmerald.

I am pretty sure I have a TB6612FGN here somewhere, I forgot about it until you mentioned it!

The VNH5019 sounds good, I think Roxanna is trying to use one of those.

I’ll look into the MC33886, and its replacement.

Basically, I am trying to decide if I should stock some of them, to bundle with RoboPi, and if so which ones, however I don’t want to stock any expensive units due to inventory costs.

6

Cool Micronauts. And amazing

Cool Micronauts. And amazing work with RoboPi. Hope it gives birth to many more powerful projects.

7

Spinoffs…

Thanks Enigmerald!

The first spinoff project is my “The Better Mousetrap Servo Tester” where I use a RoboPi to implement a sophisticated servo tester.

http://www.mikronauts.com/the-better-mousetrap-servo-tester/

I am also planning many addons to RoboPi :slight_smile:

8

FYI - Elf uses the L9110S

As mentioned in the first post. If you are interested, you can find Elf here on LMR at

https://www.robotshop.com/letsmakerobots/elf-my-robopi-raspberry-pi-2wd-magician-wifi-robot

It seems to work fine for the yellow gear motors supplied with the Magician 2WD chassis.