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DC motor with motor driver included

Electrical Engineering Asked by Jason Easton on February 5, 2021

I’m trying to make a kit for my students for online schooling next semester. On one of the modules, I want to teach them how to control a DC motor using a microcontroller and a 6V battery pack.

Normally, people use motor drivers to handle the high draw of current from the motor and to specify a signal to direct the motion of the motor (Clockwise vs Counter Clockwise vs no motion) from the microcontroller.

Since there are a lot of wires involved in powering the motor driver with the ESP32, I was looking for a simpler solution to power the DC motor.

My Goal is to simplify the motor to be similar to a standard MG90S servo motor where the 4 inputs to the motor are power (from the battery), ground, and two signal pins. Some solutions that I have thought of to achieve this with the DC motor have been:

  • Printing a PCB of the motor driver and soldering it onto the DC motor for my students, This would allow them to only have to connect 4 wires to the output of the PCB (would look similar to the image attached below).
  • Using a brushless motor which has a motor driver built into it. The problem of this is that it would require manual intervention (clicking a reset button) to get it working again after an overcurrent has been detected.

I would really appreciate it if anyone has any other suggestions on how to simplify this process or if anyone knows of a motor that already exists that is capable of doing this.

Thanks,
Jason Easton

enter image description here

2 Answers

Polulu sales blurb:

Continuous rotation servos are standard hobby RC servos that have been modified to offer open-loop speed control instead of their usual closed-loop position control. The modification effectively turns them into motors with integrated motor drivers in a compact, inexpensive package. Just throw on a wheel and you have a drive system for your robot that can be controlled using an RC signal or a simple direct connection to a single microcontroller I/O line.

They are not the only vendor with similar products.

Answered by Jasen on February 5, 2021

I suggest using a separate board for the controller. Why?

  1. It's only two more wires.

  2. Your students will learn the difference between a motor and controller.

  3. Easier to debug and repair.

  4. Motor can have longer wires without worrying about ground loops etc.

  5. Possibility of using a different motor, or some other device.

Answered by Bruce Abbott on February 5, 2021

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