SainSmart L293D is a monolithic integrated, high voltage, high current,
4-channel driver. Basically this means using this chip you can use DC motors and
power supplies of up to 25 Volts, thats some pretty big motors and the chip can
supply a maximum current of 600mA per channel, the L293D chip is also what’s
known as a type of H-Bridge. The H-Bridge is typically an electrical circuit
that enables a voltage to be applied across a load in either direction to an
output, e.g. motor.
Features
* 2 interface for 5V Servo connected to the Arduino’s high-resolution dedicated
timer – no jitter.
* Can drive 4 DC motors or 2 stepper motors or 2 Servo.
* Up to 4 bi-directional DC motors with individual 8-bit speed selection.
* Up to 2 stepper motors (unipolar or bipolar) with single coil, double coil or
interleaved stepping.
* 4 H-Bridges: per bridge provides 0.6A (1.2A peak current) with thermal
protection, can run motors on 4.5V to 25V DC.
* Pull down resistors keep motors disabled during power-up.
* 2 external terminal power interface, for seperate logic/motor supplies.
* Tested compatible for Arduino Mega, Diecimila & Duemilanove.
NOTE: The link is the documents about SainSmart
L293D Motor Drive Shield.
https://s3-ap-northeast-1.amazonaws.com/sain-amzn/20/20-011-914/L293.rar
Actually an Adafruit Motor Sheild.,
The description of this product (and all of SainSmart’s products) is very lacking. The motor controller is actually designed by Adafruit (which is great). You can find more information and sample code at […]- which is the URL silkscreened on the board and for some reason not mentioned in the description and left out of the images of this listing.
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Power supply max voltage lower than claimed,
The item description claims that it can handle up to a 25V power supply. I tried running this board with a 24V power supply and one of the bypass capacitors blew up spectacularly. Turns out that although the driver chips can handle the voltage (I think they’re rated up to 36V), this board uses bypass capacitors with a 16V maximum working voltage. To be on the safe side you wouldn’t want to run right up to the max rating, but you should be fine with a 12V supply or possibly even a 14.8V LiPo battery pack.
If you’re feeling adventurous you could desolder the two caps in question (C7 and C8 on the board) and replace them with higher voltage rated caps with the same footprint to beef up the max voltage.
Other than the blowing up issue, the board works fine.
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Great Motor Shield – Get it,
This is great motor shield. Fully Assembled and ready to go. Quality well designed and fully functional product. I heard complaints that the ICs run hot for Adafruit motor shield (this is a copy of Adafruits motor shield) and I dont see any problem with this shield perhaps my motors were within 1 Amp of what this board can handle. I built a Ultrasonic obstacle sensing Robot using 2 ordinary DC Motors and this shield worked perfectly fine with it.
The Only CON, I can think off with this shield is that Arduino pin outputs from Motor shield are not accessible. For some of the projects you may have to directly solder the other sensors to Arduino Pins directly.
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