concept motor shield in category arduino

This is an excerpt from Manning's book Arduino in Action. Login to get full access to this book.

The motor shield from Adafruit, which was discussed in the previous section, is one of the most popular Arduino shields because of what it enables you to do easily: connect multiple motors and external power sources to the Arduino without worrying about over-powering or over-drawing current from the Arduino.

The motor shield allows you to connect four bidirectional DC motors or two stepper motors, and it also has two connections for 5V servos. Without some serious power behind it the shield is probably not going to work if you connect all of them at the same time, but it does allow you to work with multiple large motors at the same time quickly and easily. Now let’s look at the library that works with the shield.

Figure 12.3. Connecting a servomotor to the motor shield

The connections are shown in figure 12.2. Note the battery pack attached to the motor shield to power the stepper motor. The two buttons have pull-down resistors on them to ensure that they only read HIGH when pressed.