Hi I was wondering what the enable pin is and what it does in a motor driver. And how I should use it when programming and using arduino. An example is the L293D H-bridge motor driver
In most motor drivers the enable pin will enable or disable the driver output stage to save power. If the driver is disabled, the motor is unpowered and outside force may move (backdrive) the motor. The ability to be backdriven depends on the mechanical arrangement of the motor gear train. A worm drive is very hard to backdrive, for instance.
Resist the temptation to use those ancient and inefficient L298 and L293 motor drivers. There are so much better modern drivers available for reasonable cost. The L293/L298 drivers may be OK for very small hobby motors, but for anything even halfway serious they just won't stack up to a modern driver. They are absolutely inappropriate for modern bipolar steppers.
Oh okay thanks. So I take it that if you just wanted to control motor speed with a potentiometer and see the variation in speed and nothing more, so just a simple and brief test run, you wouldn't have to include the enable pin in any code, as having to enable or disable driver output stage to save power.
And yes, I will be avoiding them, thanks for letting me know.
Sorry, since I don't use those drivers much I forgot that in the case of the L298/L293 use the enable pin to control the speed. Use the inA and inB pins to select direction and PWM the enable pin for speed.
Other drivers will have a direction input and a PWM input for speed and the enable will only control the output stage.
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Ohh right okay, thank you, and no worries
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