Controlling 2 of each motor types with Arduino Nano

Projects General Guidance
1

Hi there,

I'm starting out with an Arduino Nano and I would like to build a robot with the following components:

  • 2 DC motors for movement
  • 2 Stepper motors to rotate head and body
  • 2 Servo motors to lift arms up and down
  • additional LEDs

My understanding (and I'd be more than happy to redirected and corrected), is that I would need either quite a few bridges or a shield in order to be able to connect all of these motors to the Nano.

I've found this when looking online: Adafruit Motor/Stepper/Servo Shield for Arduino v2 Kit (v2.3) | The Pi Hut

Which sounds to be perfect, although it looks like I would need 2 in order to do the trick.
Is this a correct assumption or would I be able to control all of the above motors with just one shield?

I'm happy to take any further suggestion if this approach is not ideal or if I should be looking at this project from another angle.

Thanks!

2

You must estimate what performance the motors and servos need to have.
Then find those motors, read their needs like voltage and current. After that You can look for stepper and motor drivers, and power supplies.

3

The servos are going to be standard sg/mg 90
The DC motors are going to be 6-12V
The stepper motors are going to be small 5V ones.

My main concern is related to the amount of available connections/pins either directly to the Arduino or to the shield mentioned above.

4

There is a topic like How to get the best out of this forum. Read it! Word sallad is a waist of Your and my time.

5

The typical "small 5V stepper" uses four pins. The DC motors will use at least 2 each (3 if you need to be able to disable the drivers). The servos use one each.

That's 14 pins minimum out of your 20 pins. Are 6 pins enough for your 'additional LEDs'? Will there be no inputs?

6

thanks for your reply!

The input is going to come through an NRF24l01 receiving data from a separate Arduino.

Could this use up more Pins than available from your calculation?

7

That's at least four more pins. Five or six if you need the "IRQ" or "CSN" pins. That's not going to leave much for LEDs.

8

I see, I think I could skip on the LEDs then!

As per controlling the motors, considering what you mentioned about using the Arduino pins directly, should I 'just' connect the motors to their related drivers and then reference the related pins in the code instead of going for a shield?

Sorry if this may sound as a stupid question, but I'm trying to wrap my head around the need for additional components Vs what's already available on the board.

9

If referring to a 28BYJ-48, best driven by a TPIC6B595 - which can control two per chip using only three pins for any reasonable number - and not a ULN2003. Since you need a driver anyway. :sunglasses:

10

And if using my MobaTools lib to drive the steppers, you even don't bother with the serial shifting. The lib can control up to 4 of this steppers with shift registers connected to the SPI pins.

11

that sounds great!

do you have an example schematic / wiring for the combo with your library and the TPIC6B595?

12

At the end of the dokumentation file there is a schematic for the HC4094. That doesn't differ much from the TPIC6B595. For the TPIC it should look like this ( cannot test it, because I dont' have one, with a HC595 and its pinning it works that way) .
DokuSpiB6595.DSN
Of course you don't need the lower one if you only have 2 steppers.

13

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