Hi all,
First off, I want to say I'm a beginner. I have an Arduino Uno rev 3 and I want to make a simple robot. I have my eyes on either the Dadu magician chassis or the tamiya tracked vehicle set. Which one should I buy? Also, will a motor shield absolutely be necessary? Please help me on how to start!
Thank you
If you have a motor that doesn't need reversing, it can be powered by a transistor setup as shown here. If you do need to reverse it, an h-bridge is called for. The h-bridge chip doesn't have to be on a shield, nor even on a factory built board, and can be made from scratch using a chip like a 298 on a breadboard as shown in this tutorial.
H-bridge chips like the 298 (which by the way, is not the only or even the best h-bridge chip) drive 2 motors, and so shields / boards using them allow you to hook up 2 motors very easily.
Have you looked at the Pololu Zumo robot? I have one and I would highly recommend it as a first Arduino robot. http://www.pololu.com/catalog/product/2505
Have you looked at the Pololu Zumo robot?
Hmmm I should have mentioned we have one of those, which we run from their 2130 driver board.
ARDUINOROBOTS24, if you use a 298 driver like the MotoMama you'll see they have heatsinks the size of a truck; the 2130 is much smaller and (although I'm sketchy on the details 8) ) uses a different technology and doesn't waste all that energy.