Description: The Arduino Motor Shield is based on the L298 (datasheet), which is a dual full-bridge driver designed to drive inductive loads such as relays, solenoids, DC and stepping motors. It lets you drive two DC motors with your Arduino board, controlling the speed and direction of each one independently.

You can also measure the current absorption of each motor, among other features. The shield is TinkerKit compatible, which means you can quickly create projects by plugging TinkerKit modules to the board.

This shield have two separate channels, called A and B, that each use 4 of the Arduino pins to choose the rotation direction, vary the speed, fast brake or sense the current that is flowing through the motor. In total there are 8 pins in use on this shield. You can use each channel separately to drive two DC motors or combine them to drive one unipolar stepper motor. The shield can supply 2 amperes per channel, for a total of 4 amperes maximum.

This shield has the 1.0 standard pinout that consist in 4 additional pins: 2 of them placed near the AREF pin, that are used for TWI communication, and the other 2 are placed near the RESET pin. The IOREF pin is used to adapt the shield to the board on which is mounted. The last one is not connected and is reserved for future uses.

The Arduino Motor Shield must be powered only by an external power supply. Because the L298 IC mounted on the shield has two separate power units, one for the logic and one for the motor supply driver.The current draw for the motor supply is often much more than the USB can give.

External (non-USB) power can come either from an AC-to-DC adapter (wall-wart) or battery. The adapter can be connected by plugging a 2.1mm center-positive plug into the Arduino's board power jack on which the motor shield is mounted or by connecting the wires that lead the power supply to the Vin and GND screw terminals, taking care to respect the polarities.

To avoid possible damage to the Arduino board on which the shield is mounted, we recommend using an external power supply that provides a voltage between 7 and 12V. If your motor require more than 9V we recommend that you separate the power lines of the shield and the Arduino board on which the shield is mounted. This is possible by cutting the "Vin Connect" jumper placed on the back side of the shield. The absolute limit for the Vin at the screw terminals is 18V.

The Vin pin on the screw terminal block, is the input voltage to the motor connected to the shield. An external power supply connected to this pin also provide power to the Arduino board on which is mounted. By cutting the "Vin Connect" jumper you make this a dedicated power line for the motor. The GND pin on the screw terminal block also connects with the Arduino GND

This shield have two separate channels, called A and B, that each use 4 of the Arduino pins to drive or sense the motor. In total there are 8 pins in use on this shield. You can use each channel separately to drive two DC motors or combine them to drive one unipolar stepper motor.

The shield's pins, divided by channel are shown in the table below:

If you don't need the Brake and in the Current Sensing and you also need more pins for your application you can disable this features by cutting the respective jumpers on the back side of the shield.

There are additional sockets on the shield described as follow:

• Screw terminal to connect the motors and their power supply.
• 2 TinkerKit connectors for two Analog Inputs (in white), connected to A2 and A3.
• 2 TinkerKit connectors for two PWM Outputs (in orange), connected to pins D5 and D6.
• 2 TinkerKit connectors for the TWI interface (in white with 4 pins), one input and one output.

You can drive two Brushed DC motors by connecting the two wires of each one in the (+) and (-) screw terminals for each channel A and B. In this way you can control its direction by setting HIGH or LOW the DIR A and DIR B pins, you can control the speed by varying the PWM A and PWM B duty cycle values. There are also the Brake A and Brake B pins that if stetted in HIGH state they brakes the DC motor faster than when you power off the motor.

You can know the current going through the DC motor by reading the SNS0 and SNS1 pins. On each channel will be a voltage proportional to the measured current, which can be read as a normal analog input, through the functions analogRead() on the analog input A0 and A1. For your convenience it is calibrated to be 3.3V when the channel is delivering its maximum possible current, that is 2A.

Note: Full documentation for this products can be found at the Arduino Motor Shield page.

• 5V to 12V operating voltage
• L298P motor controller, drives 2 DC motors or 1 stepper motor
• Max current of 2A per channel or 4A max (with external power supply)
• Current sensing of 1.65V/A
• Free running stop and brake function

Documents:

• Schematic
• EAGLE files