Motor shield TB6612 for Arduino V2.3 - Adafruit 1438

Motor shield TB6612 for Arduino V2.3 - Adafruit 1438

Product information:

The original Adafruit motor shield is one of the most trusted shields. That's why Adafruit decided to make it even better. The shield was upgraded to make controlling DC and stepper motors even better and easier. With this shield you will be ready for your next robotics project in no time! The ability to control 4 DC motors or 2 stepper motors remained but was expanded with many improvements:

Instead of a L293D darlington driver, there's now a TB6612 MOSFET driver: with 1.2A per channel and 3A peak current capability. It also has much less voltage drop across the motor so you get more torque from your batteries, and there are also flyback diodes built in.

Instead of using a latch and the Arduino's PWM pins, there is a dedicated PWM driver chip on board. This chip sends all motor and speed settings over an I2C bus. Only 2 pins (SDA & SCL) are needed to control multiple motors. By using I2C, you can also connect other I2C devices or shields to the same pins! This makes it compatible with any Arduino, such as the Uno, Due, Leonardo and Mega R3.

Totally stackable design: 5 address selection pins allow you to stack 32 shields: that's 64 stepper motors or 128 DC motors! That's enough to make quite a project!

A few more improvements are polarity protection on the power pin and some space for prototyping. The shield has been tested by Adafruit, all you need to do is solder the header pins and screw terminal blocks as you want them.

Let's take another look at the specifications:
- 2 connections for 5V 'hobby' servos, connected directly to the Arduino's high-resolution timer - no jitter!
- 4 H-bridges: The TB6612 chipset provides 1.2A per bridge (3A peak) with overheat protection and internal kickback protection diodes. Suitable for motors from 4.5V to 13.5V DC.
- Up to 4 bi-directional DC motors with individual 8-bit speed control (that's about 0.5% resolution).
- Up to 2 stepper motors (unipolar or bipolar) with single coil, dual coil, interleaved or micro-stepping.
- The engines are automatically switched off when switched on.
- Large terminal block connectors to easily attach wires (18-26AWG).
- Arduino reset button is also placed on top of the board.
- Polarity protected 2-pin terminal block and a jumper to connect external power for individual circuits/motors.
- Compatible tested with Arduino UNO, Leonardo, ADK/Mega R3, Due, Diecimila & Duemilanove. Also works with Mega/ADK R2 and earlier with 2 wire jumpers.
- Library and examples available for download from Adafruit via website link.

Specifications:

Dimensions, assembled: 70mm x 55mm x 10mm
This board/chip uses I2C 7-bit addresses between 0x60 and 0x80, selectable with jumpers.

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