Arduino: Adafruit Motor Shield

Finally had to give in and get a motorshield for the Arduino. I purchased it from RobotShop not knowing that it was a kit (i.e. you build it yourself). I should have read the title of the item a little better. It was fun to build the shield with these instructions PDF. It helped me build up some soldering skills. Fortunately, I bought some soldering flux paste from Radio Shack which helped me keep my work clean. The shield lets me power up to 4 DC motors, 2 servos or 2 stepper motors. You can use it to power bigger motors using an external power supply. The shield has 4 H-Bridges provided by L293D chipset.

I set it up with a RC car which has 2 motors for steering and forward/reverse movement.

All the instruction on how to build the motorshield and how to use it with the library are available on this ladyada.net website

About Nirmal

Computer Engineer View all posts by Nirmal