Documentation

Motor Board

A phot of an un-cased motor board The Motor Board can be used to control two 12V DC motors. Your kit contains two of these boards to allow you to control up to four motors. These can be used for moving your robot, although don’t feel you are limited to using them for this purpose.

The speed and direction of the two outputs are controlled independently through the USB connection. The board also needs power delivered from a 12V port on the Power Board in order to drive the motors.

The motor board uses pulse-width modulation (PWM) to control the amount of power that is sent to the motors.

You can control the motors using the Motor Board API.

Board Diagram

motor board diagram

Indicators

LED Meaning Initial power-up state
Power Green when powered correctly
Red when polarity is wrong for Power In
Green
M{0,1} Speed/Direction Brightness indicates speed, colour indicates direction Off
M{0,1} Output Status Blue indicates more than 50% load (5A)
Red indicates a motor driver fault
Off
USB Power The USB interface is powered On
USB Data Data is being transferred to/from the board Off

Case Dimensions

The case measures 70×84×20mm. Don’t forget that the cables will stick out.

Specification

Parameter Value
Nominal input voltage 11.1V ± 15%
Absolute maximum input voltage 16V
Minimum input voltage 9V
Output voltage 11.1V ± 15%
Continuous output current per channel 10A
Peak output current 1 20A
Serial connection voltage 2 3.3–5V

Designs

You can access the schematics and source code of the firmware on the motor board in the following places. You do not need this information to use the board but it may be of interest to some people.

  1. Can be sustained for 1 second, on a single channel. 

  2. If the board is controlled solely via the serial connection, this voltage must be supplied via the serial connector. We use the UART serial protocol.