hello everyone i am newbie and making a project which has two l298 motor drivers with 3v-12v plastic gearbox 150rpm dc motor, one uno, 7.4 li-ion 5000mah power supply, and other sensors
i am powering motors directly from power supply and using buck lm2596 for steady 5v power for sensors and arduino, but the problem is when i run my project very frequently my motors stall and stop and then restarts and same happening with bluetooth control, i even used capacitors to filter out peaks but nothing changes and l298 gets hotter and voltage is dropping to 4-5v at motor inputs,
and now i am planning to remove l298 and get bts7960 driver.
am i doing good or is there anything i am missing?
The heat tells you that the motors are drawing more than 2 Amperes, each. What are the specs for the motors. Measure the resistance of the motor windings and the actual voltage you are sending to the L298 drivers.
The ancient, extremely inefficient L298 is a terrible choice for motor driver, as over half the battery power can be wasted as heat, internally.
Use a modern MOSFET motor driver. Pololu has the best selection.
four (3V - 12V) Dual Shaft Plastic Gearbox DC motors are used, power supply is of 7.4v, 7.1v across motor driver and roughly 4-5v across motors, and two motors per driver.
i didn't measured resistance of motor windings but will do so.
what about bts7960 40A motor driver is it a good choice? it supports max 43A per channel. I don't want costly motor drivers and bts7960 is under my budget.
No, that is vast overkill for a "3v-12v plastic gearbox 150rpm dc motor".
Post a link to the motor product page.
See this.
But seriously i didn't thought that these motors will draw too much current. And that's why i have used 2 motors per motor driver.
Do you think loose connections of motor wires will be a problem because i didn't solder them but now i think that could be a problem. Should i consider it?
They do for the L298 if you connect two motors in parallel. This driver will work well for one motor.
Soldering is required for motor power connections.
They don't so you must have problems somewhere else.
What is this 7.4V power supply?
I think problem is that i didn't solder the wire to the motors and because of loose joints these motors are creating problem and drawing abnormal current because of less contact of joints.
Btw power supply is 2x 3.7v li-ion (2500mah each) cells, making up 7.4v
No i connected only one motor per channel and i am using 4 motors and 2 dual channel L298N drivers
Yes, I would solder the wires to the motors. Also check the battery connections to the drivers.
Then what will be the next cheapest option which can handle decent amount of current with less voltage drop
Before you spend more money, why don't you solder everything together.
There have been many people on the forum that have build cars/robots with the L298 driver
I = U/R ; if R-UP, I - DOWN
Sure, I am going to do that.