Is there a major difference between the FEZ DC Motor Shield and the Arduino Motor Shield?? The obvious difference is how many motors they can control (FEZ: 2 DC motors, Arduino: 4 DC motors). But in terms of operation, can I hook up an Arduino Motor Shield to the FEZ Panda and use the same .NET Library (driver) for the FEZ DC Motor Shield?
I’m not sure if the FEZ Motor Shield is a derivative of the Arduino Motor Shield. If it is, then the code should work for both of them, right?
Hi, I haven’t tried either of them.
To control motors or heaters, I use the Ardumoto - Motor Driver Shield [url]http://www.sparkfun.com/products/9213[/url] or the Monster Moto Shield [url]http://www.sparkfun.com/products/10182[/url] for higher rated motors.
Be aware that although the data sheet of the Monster Moto Shield mentions upto 41 Volts, it can only be used up to 16 (maybe 17 Volts) because of through shoot.
I remember that the Ardumoto is not PWM pin compatibel with FEZ. But that can be solved bij an adapter board.
Thanks for the reply. For the Ardumoto, you said I would need an adapter board? What kind of adapter board? What if I use the Monster Moto Shield? Do I still need an adapter board? Much thanks,
For Monster Moto you do not need an adapter board. It is PWM pin compatibel with FEZ.
If you program software PWM than you can use a Ardumoto without adapter board.
Ardumoto is 1/3 of the price of the Monster Moto I guess.
Ardomoto has PWM pins on D3 and D11, if you look at the pic below, FEZ hasn’t.
Thanks again. Do you need PWM for direction also? Or is PWM only needed for speed. It says on the Ardumoto page:
Control for motor attached to OUT1/2 is connected to digital line 12 (direction A) and digital line 3 (PWM A).
Control for motor attached to OUT3/4 is connected to digital line 13 (direction B) and digital line 11 (PWM B).
On the image you linked to, it says: All pins on the 0.1" female headers and extension headers can be used as digital I/O. Does that mean all pins listed in the table can be used as digital I/O?
For controlling the direction, we would connect to digital pin 12 and 13? But those are labelled as SPI1 MISO and SPI1 SCK on the the FEZ, are those capabilities in addition to digital output?
If I don’t need to mount the shield on top of the FEZ, can I manually connect the pins from the FEZ to the motor shield, even if the pin diagram doesn’t match?
What I mean is, if I take a jumper cable and connect a PWM pin on the FEZ (for example Di5) to pin 11 on the Ardumoto shield (which is supposed to be connected to PWM 11 on the Arduino I think), will this work? I would do the same for all the other pins as well.
On another note, after looking at the PCB layout of the Ardumoto shield, it seems that pin 3 is not connected to the rest of the circuit, then how is it controlling anything?
yes you can tie pins together with wire, which will allow you to connect them to whatever pins you want and not only in the way the shield wanted you to.