I picked up two L298N Stepper Motor Driver Controller PCBs from Hobby Components for my K-9, to go with the two 24 V / 4.5 A Parvalux motors I acquired.
The L298N Stepper Motor Driver Controller Board from Hobby Components has the following specifications:
- Uses an ST L298N chip, can directly drive two 3-30 V DC motors, provide a 5V output interface, power for 5 V single-chip circuitry, supports 3.3 VMCU control
- It can easily control the DC motor speed and direction, and can also control a 2-phase stepper motor
- Driver: L298N Dual H Bridge DC Motor Driver IC
- Driven part of the terminal supply voltage: VMS 5 – 35 VDC
- Driven part of the peak current Io: 2 A per bridge
- The logical part of the terminal supply voltage: 4.5 – 7 V
- The logical part of the operating current range: 0 – 36 mA
- Control signal input voltage range: 4.5 – 5.5 V (high) / 0V (low)
- Maximum power consumption: 20 W
The L298N can supply 2A per channel (in DC operation), however, figure 7 of the data sheet gives a method for ganging both channels on one board together to give 3 A in DC operation and 3.5 A for repetitive peak current (PWM drive).
Given that my two motors are 24 V DC @ 4.5 A, I suspect that I may have issues with the L298Ns getting a little bit warm.
I will build my Interface board that takes an RS 232 / RS 485 input and outputs two PWM outputs to the Motor Driver boards.
I may also try and work out how to put RC Servo in on the board, so over the next few posts there will be some Arduino code and circuit diagrams for interfacing this.
I will be using Cadsofts Eagle PCB software (Alex Lang is writing tutorials for it here), for my PCB layout. It’s a not-too-bad free ECAD/EDA (Electronic design automation) application (I have not managed to get KiCAD to work for me in a way I like).
