Connecting an Electric Motor to Computer

How big a motor do you need to drive? There are plenty of motor controllers available, but they have to be sized to the motor. The key numbers are maximum motor amps and motor voltage.

John Nagle

I don't have a ton of experience in electronics, so I don't know the specs of my motor in terms voltage and amplitude... But I would like to have a motor that can provide probably every force from about 0-5 pounds... it doesn't need to be that strong. Also, I need to be able to connect 2 motors simultaneously, or have the single motor able to reverse its direction if it needs to. I hope you can find something like that. Thanks.

Reversible motors are generally available in all sizes and power ranges without substantial penalty in size, cost, efficiency, etc. over other motor types, and so a single reversible motor is just about always preferable to using two motors. The "force of 5 pounds" helps a little, but doesn't tell the whole story. You could run a small slot-car motor on an AA battery and gear it down enough to lift 5 lbs, but it could take it a minute to lift it one foot. How fast would you want this 5 pounds lifted/moved? This would help give a size to the motor and find the appropriate driving electronics.

See "

" for some motor controllers. There are cheaper solutions, but if all you need is bidirectional motor speed control from a serial port, they have that. Their stuff is also hard to blow out if you make a mistake and is well protected against overloads. Their controllers start at $145.

If you need to control motor position, not just speed, things get more complicated. But you said "speed", so I won't go into that.

John Nagle