Ethernet and Motor Shield?

Forum 2005-2010 (read only) Hardware Interfacing
1

I am new to arduino and would like to purchase some electronics.

How would I go about controlling 2 (or more) higher powered motors with an arduino and the ethernet shield? I would like to be able to control an rc car. I was unsure of the motor shield because of the amount of power that would be required for the rc car. I also don't know if the ethernet shield would be compatible with the motor shield.

Thanks

2

How would I go about controlling 2 (or more) higher powered motors with an arduino and the ethernet shield? I would like to be able to control an rc car.

The ethernet shield requires a cable to connect it to the local network. Do you have a really long cord?

3

Well because of my budget, I will be using a wireless router I own to connect the Arduino (because I eventually want to add a network camera to everything and Ethernet would be necessary).

4

If the router can be reflashed to dd-wrt, you should check to see whether it has a serial port hiding under the hood (some of them have a TTL-level erial port that you could wire right to the Arduino Tx and Rx pins). That would save you the cost and hassle of adding an Ethernet board.

You can put more than one shield at a time on the Arduino by using "stackable" headers. Note that the Ethernet shield has tall components on it, so you may need to build the top shield with stackable headers, too. Or use wire-wrap-style headers to get longer pins.

There are multiple types of motor shields out there. Make sure you check which pins they use to make sure there's no conflict with the Ethernet.

Also, motor shields are only good for small-to-medium motors. If you're making something big enough to haul a router around, you may need to use a seperate controller, like the ones from Pololu, that can handle bigger motors.

5

Well because of my budget, I will be using a wireless router I own to connect the Arduino (because I eventually want to add a network camera to everything and Ethernet would be necessary).

The below might be of interest.

http://www.lynxmotion.net/viewtopic.php?f=20&t=6343

6

Thanks for the speedy replies. And thanks for the info.