Motor Shield Voltage - Solved

Projects General Guidance
1

Hi,

I have an Uno with an Ardunio Motor Shield Rev 3 stacked on it. I have a 6v battery powering it. The battery Voltage measures 6.25 V.. With the PWM set to the max of 256, the voltage at the motor measures 4.77 V.. That's a drop of 1.5 V.. Is that to be expected? Is there anything I can do to get more oomph to the motor?

Thanks

2

The L298 motor driver on that board is ancient technology and is known to drop 2V to over 4V in its output stage. Modern MOSFET output drivers are much more efficient. Pololu has a good line of motor drivers and instructional pages on their use.

3

Perfectly normal, because an Arduino motor shield R3 use an ancient L298 motor driver, with losses up to 4volt at max chip current.
Add one or two AA batteries to your 6volt stack, to make up for the losses of this dinosaur.
Leo..

4

Thanks for your help! Kinda what I expected.