Connect a DC Motor

Problem

You want to connect a standard DC motor to the Make Controller Kit.

 

Solution

Connect the two leads of the motor between a pair of adjacent digital outs on the Application Board.  You can connect up to 4 DC motors:

• Motor 0 - Digital Outs 0 & 1
• Motor 1 - Digital Outs 2 & 3
• Motor 2 - Digital Outs 4 & 5
• Motor 3 - Digital Outs 6 & 7

 

 

Note the positive lead (red) is connected to Out0 and the negative lead (black) is connected to Out1.  You won't damage the board by connecting the wires the other way around, but in this orientation the motor will turn forwards when you send positive values and backwards for negative values.  If you swap the wires, this relationship will also be swapped.

The reference for controlling motors via OSC can be found here, and the reference for programming the motors in your own firmware is here.

 

Discussion

With the half-H drivers on the digital outs of the Make Controller Kit, you can easily control up to 4 DC motors.  Each output can handle up to 1A, so if your motors exceed this limit, you'll need to make extra affordances.  The Application Board has diodes on all the outputs that serve to protect the Make Controller from excessive noise or electrical spikes that sometimes occur as a result of driving motors.  So, you should feel free to experiment with connecting different motors. 

You can power each bank of outputs, or each group of two motors, separately.  You can independently set either bank to 5V, V+, or VExt - 5V is, as you might have guessed, 5 volts, V+ is whatever voltage the power supply you have connected to the main power connector is providing, and VExt is the value of yet another supply you might want to use to drive just that bank of outputs.  Check the digital output section of the Application Board Overview for a more detailed discussion of the available power options.