The L293D Motor Driver/Servo Shield for Arduino is probably one of the most versatile on the market and features 2 servo and 4 motor connectors for DC or stepper motors. That makes it a great shield for any robotic project.

This Arduino compatible motor Driver shield is a full-featured product that it can be used to drive 4 DC motor or two 4-wire steppers and two 5v servos. It drives the DC motor and stepper with the L293D, and it drives the servo with Arduino pin9 and pin10.

The shield contains two L293D motor drivers and one 74HC595 shift register. The shift register expands 3 pins of the Arduino to 8 pins to control the direction of the motor drivers. The output enables the L293D is directly connected to the PWM outputs of the Arduino.

Firmware

Note:

Power for the motors can be supplied from the Arduino boards DC Jack (normally 9V) or from the 2-pin EXT-PWR terminal block. If you are supplying power from the EXT_PWR terminal block you should remove the PWR jumper or you could damage the shield and the Arduino board.

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Features :

1. 2 connections for 5V ‘hobby’ servos connected to the Arduino’s high-resolution dedicated timer
2. 4 H-Bridges: L293D chipset provides 0.6A per bridge (1.2A peak) with thermal shutdown protection, internal kickback protection diodes. Can run motors on 4.5VDC to 25VDC.
3. Up to 4 bi-directional DC motors with individual 8-bit speed selection (so, about 0.5% resolution)
4. Up to 2 stepper motors (unipolar or bipolar) with single coil, double coil, or interleaved stepping.
5. Pull-down resistors keep motors disabled during power-up
6. Big terminal block connectors to easily hook up wires (18-26AWG) and power
7. Arduino reset button brought up top
8. 2-pin terminal block and jumper to connect external power, for separate logic/motor supplies
9. Tested compatible with Arduino Mega 1280 & 2560, Diecimila, Duemilanove, and UNO
10. Download the easy-to-use Arduino software library, check out the examples and you’re ready to go!