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.

FEATURES:

Maker Drive is designed to solve the above problems while adding some useful features:

Fool-Proof (Peace of Mind) - Maker Drive comes with Reverse Polarity Protection. With this protection it will greatly reduce the risk of damaging the motor driver
Compact Design - Maker Drive is designed to be compact, roughly the size of a passport photo, 43mm(W) x 35mm(L) x 14mm(H)
4 Test Buttons (2 for each channel) - Easily test the motor or your mechanism without any controller or coding.
4 Indicator LEDs (2 for each channel) - Easily test your coding and wire connections.
Buck-boost regulator to produce 5V output from an input voltage as low as 2.5V- Power your 5V controller with 2 AA batteries. With the wide input voltage range, you can power Maker Drive with two AA or AAA battery (1.5V x 2 = 3V) or single-cell Li-ion or Lipo battery that has a rated voltage of 3.7V.
Regenerative Braking Control - In some cases, it is called Regen braking and it provides better control over motor speed. Most application perform better in Regen braking for example line following as the controller can control the speed more accurately. Another method is coast stop which allow the motor to slow down or stop using the inertia.

Specially Designed for Mobile Robots - Building a small mobile robot has never been easier with Maker Drive + Maker UNO duo! If you are interested in building a line following robot, you may follow this tutorial.
Support Stepper Motor - This is an additional bonus feature! Maker Drive is capable of driving a stepper motor.

$3.73

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