Current setup

Just to be thorough I thought it would be good to document the current setup I’m working with.

  • one Arduino Duemilanove
  • one Motor shield from adafruit
  • two DC motors
  • one 12V power supply from an old switch
The motor shield is stacked on top of the Arduino. The motors are connected to M1 and M2 on the motor shield. The motor shield draws power from the 12V PSU, for testing purposes it is configured not to share power with the Arduino. The Arduino draws power from the USB cable which connects it to my laptop.

It works … sort of

Okay, piggybacking the IC seems to improve the performance.

I’ve been trying to run this code:

#include <AFMotor.h>
 
AF_DCMotor motorR(1, MOTOR12_1KHZ);
AF_DCMotor motorL(2, MOTOR12_1KHZ);
 
void setup() {
motorR.setSpeed(200);
motorR.run(RELEASE);
 
motorL.setSpeed(200);
motorL.run(RELEASE);
}
 
void loop() {
motorR.setSpeed(200);
motorL.setSpeed(200);
motorR.run(BACKWARD);
motorL.run(BACKWARD);
}

The motors start turning enough to turn the screws as well. After about 5 seconds the screws stop, but I can still hear the motors trying to turn them. Currently I have no idea why they can’t.

The L293 ICs are becoming quite hot, so I grabbed the first heat dispenser I could find in my assortment, it may be oversized but it should suffice.

Heat dispenser for the L293 ICs, a little oversizedThat’s it for today, let’s see what I can do about it over the weekend.