When you need to indipendently drive two DC motors, controlling both velocity and direction,
this board is what you need.
It is based on the famous integrated circuit L298, producted by STMicroelectronics; the L298 is
an integrated monolithic circuit in a 15-lead Multiwatt package. It is a high voltage, high current dual full-bridge driver
designed to accept standard TTL logic levels and drive inductive loads such as relays, solenoids, DC and stepping motors.
Normally for this kind of applications the minimum supply voltage allowed is about 8 or 9V. Instead in our driver you can use
also small batteries at 6V; this is very important to select the power source and the kind of DC motors, due to dimension, weight
and consuption specifications requested by the application you are developing. The maximum supply voltage supported by this
board is 30V.
To enable or disable each channel independently of the input signals there are provided two enable inputs
(Enable1, Enable2) positioned on the front of the board.
On the same strip connector there is the sense output that allows
the current monitoring. The current that flows through the load comes out from the bridge at the sense output : an external
resistor (R5, R6) allows to detect the intensity of this current. The sense output voltage can be used to control the current
amplitude by chopping the inputs, or to provide overcurrent protection by switching low the enable input. If you don't need
this information you have to solder a jumper instead of these resistors.
This board also provides direction LED indicators
for both channels; this is very usefull during setup stage to verify the firmware behaviour (also without appling a real motor
to the output).
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