Hi guys,
I need work with Arduino and 5 DC motors, which shield do you recommend me, to control them?
Thanks
Are you needing speed and/or directional control? What kind of DC motors (specs)?
If you are looking for speed and directional control for say five small 3-6 VDC hobby motors, you're probably not going to find much (but then again, I haven't looked). Servos are one thing to have a shield for - directional motor control is a completely 'nother ball-o-wax.
You would probably be better off building or purchasing 5 separate h-bridges, and then wiring them to the Arduino ports (each will require a minimum of 2 pins, plus power and ground - which will be separate from the Arduino anyhow). You might also look into using h-bridges that can be controlled using SPI/I2c (that way you only need a very minimal amount of pins to control them from the Ardunio, plus they can be daisy-chained on the bus, and you can expand the number easily in the future - the only downside is that any such h-bridge will likely be available in SMT packages only).
Our Rugged Motor Driver can control 2 DC motors, and the neat thing is that with some simple hardware changes you can stack another shield on top and control another 2 motors. And yes, you can even stack another shield on top of that to control a total of 6 DC motors.
But it is important to know the specs of your motors (most importantly, current).
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The Gadget Shield: accelerometer, RGB LED, IR transmit/receive, speaker, microphone, light sensor, potentiometer, pushbuttons
RuggedCircuits:
Our Rugged Motor Driver can control 2 DC motors, and the neat thing is that with some simple hardware changes you can stack another shield on top and control another 2 motors. And yes, you can even stack another shield on top of that to control a total of 6 DC motors.But it is important to know the specs of your motors (most importantly, current).
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The Gadget Shield: accelerometer, RGB LED, IR transmit/receive, speaker, microphone, light sensor, potentiometer, pushbuttons
Hopefully he's not controlling a bunch a 25 cent hobby motors, because spending $72.00 to control 5 such motors seems a bit of a...reach.
Don't get me wrong, RC - I know you have expenses, there's profit, recoup of design costs, etc - plus if you undercharged, people might not buy it out of fear that it isn't "worth it" (weird consumer psychology there - but it is something studied and known about)...
Still - for such small (or low current), three L298 devices plus heatsinks would cost far less (even if you factored in some custom carrier boards from this guy: http://www.jrhackett.net/L298adapter.shtml).
I just wanted to amend my last post - I'm not trying to be harsh on RC; he provides a valuable service to the community (rugged arduinos and such), and I respect that. His boards are also likely priced that way because he provides a quality product, support, service, etc - plus its a pretty much "plug-n-play" solution (whereas bare L298s connected via adaptor boards and wired up, plus the extra shottky diodes needed, sense resistors, etc - isn't). Maybe that might be worth it to the OP and others; in some instances, I can see where time vs. money would play into that, as wiring up a bunch of L298 chips would/could be a pain, and you just want to get something to work - thus RC's kit would be more welcome in such a scenario. I guess I feel I have more time than money for certain things, I suppose...
Heck, if he only needs unidirectional control of 25 cent hobby motors then a handful of transistors and a protoboard would be even cheaper.
It's all in the details. Our $72 solution to control 6 motors at 1.5A each (with no extra heatsinking) is a pretty good deal. We anxiously await more details from the original poster....
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The Aussie Shield: breakout all 28 pins to quick-connect terminals
Thank you guys for your replies.