Hi,
I recently found out this article on Adafruit:
Here they don't use motor drivers to control these dc motors.
If so, can I use only transistors to control 2 dc motors? They're not big, they're about as big as my thumb.
or will they fry my board?
Thanks!
A transistor IS a motor driver.
A single transistor can only control the motor in one direction.
For reverse, you need a H-bridge (with four transistors and some drive circuitry).
Make sure your setup can cope with the current of those motors.
It is usually not wise to power motors from the same supply as the Arduino.
Leo..
Wawa:
A transistor IS a motor driver.
Yes, but the big thing nowadays is going with mosfets, which is still technically a transistor. All the other parameters still apply though
MOSFETs have been the switching device of choice since the 1980's, since they out-perform pretty much
everything else. There are legacy devices which use darlingtons and BJTs, but no-one would design
power electronics with them any more (except perhaps for cost reduction reasons).
BJTs are mainly used for analog and RF electronics where their properties are strengths (low noise at low
impedances, linearity in response, low spread in bias voltage)