Hello everyone, I am currently in the process of building a environment based robot as my senior project. One issue I am currently facing is powering a DC motor with the arduino. Recently I purchased the Rover 5 robot chassis which came with four DC motors and encoders (don't need all four but hey). My question is can I control the motors with the shield made by arduino. Each motor has four pins power, gnd, encoder A, and encoder B. There is also two other pins (pwr and gnd) outside these four that can be directly connected, not sure the best way to connect to the micro controller. I know several third party companies make motor shields that are specific to the Rover 5 pins, but it is easier and quicker for me to go with arduino.
The 4 pin connector sounds to me like it is only for the encoders while the two separate pins V and GND are for the motor. Post a link to the hardware.
Have you checked out Rugged Circuits motor shield or basic motor shield? I have its standard motor shield.
A little background info. The robotics class at my University uses the Handy Board (old school) as a robot platform. This is good but I am trying to convince the school to go a new direction with arduino. I don't need the motor controls to be real complicated, just basic control of changing direction.
No idea how to connect to the chassis. The manual says nothing about the connectors. Trace the 2 wires to see if they go to the motor. The motor shields I recommended can only do 2 motors.