Maker Drive: Motor Driver for Beginners

Brushed motor is the most widely used motor because it is easy to use. Just supply the two terminals with DC power, the motor will start rotating! If you want to control its speed and direction using a controller, usually you will use an L298N Motor Driver. But if you want an easy and beginner-friendly motor driver, you are on the right page! Maker Drive is designed for simplicity and with the beginner in mind!
 
The Problem Faced by Beginners in Driving DC Brushed Motor
Maker Drive is designed base on feedback from users, especially 1st time user. If you are a beginner or newbie that needs a simple motor driver to drive DC brushed motor for building a mobile robot or other purposes, you might face some of these obstacles:
Burning your Motor Driver - Many low-cost motor driver does not come with Reserve Polarity Protection and this might result in smoke coming out from the driver if you connect the power in the wrong polarity. This gives you a burnt motor driver and of course a waste of money and your precious time. This will further cause anxiety for you to kickstart your electronics project.
Too Bulky for compact project - Some motor driver comes with BIG heat sink and take up too much space.
Hard to test and troubleshoot - With normal motor driver, beginners face a common problem during building project - difficulty in testing and troubleshooting the circuit. Yes, even with a clear schematic or diagram, the circuit will not work right after you complete the connection. Most of the time, we will need to test or troubleshoot. Without easy to use input and output indicator, you will need to write a program to test the motor driver. And that increases the complexity of debugging as we do not know whether the problem is due to wiring connection or coding in your program.
Separate Power for Low Voltage Motor - Many low-cost motor driver has onboard 5V linear voltage regulator, which is great to power your controller like Arduino. But this linear voltage regulator will not output 5V if Vin is lower than 7V. Yet, many small toy motors used in DIY projects are rated at lower than 7V. These motors are suitable to be powered by two AA or AAA batteries (3V or less) or single-cell Li-ion 18650/Li-Po battery (3.7V rated voltage). With that, you will need two separate power sources, one for the motors and another one to get stable 5V output for a controller such as the Arduino board.