TinyShield Motor x4

The TinyShield Motor x4 allows you to drive four independently controlled DC brushed motors from your TinyDuino! Using four of the super miniature but very powerful 2mm x 2mm TI DRV8837 Motor Driver (H-Bridge) IC, this shield will allow for to 1.8A per channel and operate motors between 1.8 to 11V. The DRV8837 is extremely easy to use and interfaces and uses a simple PWM to control motor speed, direction, coasting and braking. The board includes a bypass capacitors, as well as heatsinking the chips to a large plane on the bottom side of the board to help with heat dissipation. An external power connection is supplied to connect up to your motor power source (like a battery), and all the connections to the motors are with standard 0.1″ spaced holes, that you can solder your motor leads into or use the supplied 0.1″ headers.

The TI DRV8837 has one H-bridge driver consisting of N-channel power MOSFETs to drive a DC motor or one winding of a stepper motor, or other devices like solenoids. An internal charge pump generates needed gate-drive voltages. There are internal shutdown functions for overcurrent protection, short-circuit protection, undervoltage lockout and over temperature. The DRV8837 can supply up to 1.8 A of output current. It operates on a motor power-supply voltage from 1.8 V to 11 V, and a device power-supply voltage of 1.8 V to 7 V. There is also a extremely low power sleep mode with 120nA sleep current per channel.

Note: While the DRV8837 supports 1.8A @ 11V, we highly recommend operating under 500mA @ 5V per channel unless you have some really good heat sinking in place.

See the tutorial from TinyCircuits here.