Raspberry Pi enthusiasts may be interested to know that a new Raspberry Pi stepper motor and DC bonnet has being designed by Adafruit and is now available to purchase from their online store priced at $22.50. The Raspberry Pi bonnet can drive up to 4 DC or 2 stepper motors with full PWM speed control offering a great solution for robotics, DIY milling machines or 3D printers. Adafruit explains a little more about the inspiration and design of the new Adafruit DC & Stepper Motor Bonnet for Raspberry Pi.
“We basically took our super-popular DC+Stepper Motor HAT and squeezed it down and made it fully assembled – plug and play ready to go, no soldering required! Since the Raspberry Pi does not have a lot of PWM pins, we use a fully-dedicated PWM driver chip onboard to both control motor direction and speed. This chip handles all the motor and speed controls over I2C. Only two pins (SDA & SCL) are required to drive the multiple motors, and since it’s I2C you can also connect any other I2C devices or HATs to the same pins.”
The Raspberry Pi stepper motor and DC bonnet supports all Raspberry Pi computers with a 2×20 connection port and you can even stack multiple motor bonnets enabling you to use up to 32 for controlling up to 64 stepper motors or 128 DC motors in a single project. Specifications include :
– 4 H-Bridges: TB6612 chipset provides 1.2A per bridge with thermal shutdown protection, internal kickback protection diodes. Can run motors on 4.5VDC to 13.5VDC.
– Up to 4 bi-directional DC motors with individual 8-bit speed selection (so, about 0.5% resolution)
– Up to 2 stepper motors (unipolar or bipolar) with single coil, double coil, interleaved or micro-stepping.
– Big terminal block connectors to easily hook up wires (18-26AWG) and power
– Polarity protected 2-pin terminal block and jumper to connect external 5-12VDC power
– Works best with Raspberry Pi model Zero, A+, B+, or Pi 2, Pi 3, etc but can be used with a model A or B if you purchase a 2×13 stacking header
– Install the easy-to-use Python library
Source: Adafruit
Latest Geeky Gadgets Deals
Disclosure: Some of our articles include affiliate links. If you buy something through one of these links, Geeky Gadgets may earn an affiliate commission. Learn about our Disclosure Policy.
