Good day! Im creating a project about rover with 4 wheels utilizing L293D motor driver shield that can be controlled using a mobile app via bluetooth. I would like to include a linear actuator that automatically extend when the rover is not moving and retract after 15 secs. Will the arduino not overwhelmed by this? And do i need to use another driver for linear actuator?
Please post a data sheet for the actuator.
The L293 is imited on the amount of curent that it can suppy to 600mA. Is the stall current of the actuator motor less than that?
Is your rover powered by batteries? If so, the L293 driver is a poor choice of motor driver. The L293 is anceint technology. It will drop 2V to over 4V of the motor power supply and dissipate the power as waste heat.
Welcome to the forum.
There is not much detail in your question to answer this.
In general the Arduino can handle the software aspects of this. But the Hardware aspects are another problem.
The L293 is a very old design and has been obsolete for decades now. It will loose a lot of voltage when driving a motor. If each of your wheels is being driven separately then there will be not enough capacity in one driver to drive a linear actuator which will need another bi-directional motor to drive it.
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Thank you for you reply.
This is the actual linear actuator i have. Though it is 12V i could run it with a 9V direct to the battery.
Yes the rover will be powered by 2 li ion batteries
Yes, but can i use the pins on the motor driver(L293D)? since i stacked this motor driver into arduino UNO. What component is better in driving linear actuator automatically using arduino?
Hi,
A quick look for that actuator quotes running power as 3W.
P = V * I so... I = P / V
I = 3 / 12 = 250 mA.
Can you measure the resistance of your actuated motor and then calculate the stall current.
Set up to what supply voltage?
Can you please post a copy of your circuit, a picture of a hand drawn circuit in jpg, png?
Hand drawn and photographed is perfectly acceptable.
Please include ALL hardware, power supplies, component names and pin labels.
Thanks.. Tom... 
Thank you for your reply.
Im following this tutorial, the components and circuit diagram. However i made my own design for the base.
My main concern is how can i connect the linear actuator to the rover. I want the linear actuator to extend when the rover is not moving and retract after 15 secs. Can i ask you what other components i need to add for this?
Not at all sure what you mean by this.
Do you mean you have a second L293?
But you would still need some way of controlling this. That is another driver.
As I said before that is a simple matter of software.
Yes I know what they look like.
But have you got one of them or two of them? Stacked can mean you added a second one of these.
If you only have one, then you can't drive a linear actuator with it because you are already using all the resources of that device to drive your motion motors.
You need to either add a second L293 board or better still get a modern driver from the link I posted.
The L293 was first introduced in 1986. Would you use a computer of this sort of age? The answer is probably no.
I only have one L293D. I dont think that the DC motor you recommend is available in my country, but can i use L298N instead?
You could use a second one, but you would have to modify it so that it uses different pins than the default ones.
Yes yes. Thank you so much. I really appreciate youe responses.
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