project CIRC-03 spin motor spin

Projects General Guidance
1

Hello,

I bought an arduino-experiment kit and succesfully finished the first two projects on the oomlout site.
However the project with the DC motor 6-14V (CIRC-03) won't work.
http://www.oomlout.com/a/products/ardx/circ-03
The motor won't run.
I compared my breadboard configuration with the one on the oomlout site over and over again and i can't find any mistake in the wiring.
As a test I tried replacing the DC motor/diode with a LED/resistor(560 ohm) and this works fine.
The LED lights up 2,5 seconds and turns off 1 second like the program instructs.
I also tried connecting the DC motor directly to the 5V and GND pins on the POWER interface of the arduino UNO and the motor runs fine then.
Any suggestions?

2

The transistor might be:

  1. Fried
  2. The wrong type (PNP instead of NPN)
  3. Wired incorrectly (not all are arranged Collector-Base-Emitter viewed from the flat side)

The breadboard could have a bad connection.

If you connect the resistor from Base to +5 instead of Base to Pin 9 the motor should run continuously. You can then wiggle wire and components to see if anything is loose.

3

It seems that my toy DC motor is drawing more power then the arduino UNO or USB port is able to deliver. I tried powering the DC motor externaly with a 9V battery and now it runs.

Thanks for your suggestions.