I know close to nothing about electrical engineering. I have a programmer for atmel chips, and I also have a few 2051 chips. How could i hook it up to a motor, i have access to a cd rom motor, a floppy motor, and i could probably dig a motor out of a printer.
Atmel 2051
Jan 27, 2004
2 Replies
To drive a motor from a microcontroller, you'll need some kind of driver circuitry. I use a 6 transistor h-bridge, which you can find at -
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circuit will turn the low-current output from your MCU to a higher current, hopefully enough to drive your motors. It's cheap, It's easy, and it works (I use this one to drive my gearmotors).
If you're not building a mini bot, chances are salvaged motors by themselves aren't going to be enough to get your bot moving...They'll just sit there cause they don't have enough torque to spin. Being mismatched, it's possible they spin at different speeds, given the same amount of current (which means your bot goes around in circles, if it moves at all!) Spend 25 bucks, and get yourself some half-decent gear motors. solarbotics.com carries various sizes/gear ratios, one of them should fit your bot plans (and while you're there...you can pick up at least a few sensors, so your bot isn't wandering around blind). I use thier big-ass ugly white gear motors...they aint pretty, but they work.
-Alex
You will have at least one stepper motor in the floppy and cd-rom drive. Take a look at this site's tutorials to learn more about steppers (or do a google search). http://209.41.165.153/stepper/ Also the easiest way to hook up a typical DC motor to an O/P of your Atmel would be a simple transistor drive cct such as this one :
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The stepper motor will most likely have 5 or 6 leads and a DC motor will have 2.
Alan
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