Lab 1: Using a Transistor to Control High Current Loads with an Arduino
To start, we had an issue getting the DC motor to work, we believed it may have been a bad wire. We troubleshooted and made sure all the connections were correct, then ultimately decided to change the motor for another, and that ended up working.
Lab 2: DC Motor Control Using an H-Bridge
Lab 3: Controlling A Stepper Motor with an H-Bridge
I had some issues with this lab. It was a little hard to translate the schematic from the lab– there were no more of the H-bridge IC (L293D) chip, so I was still using the H-bridge TB6612 breakout board from the second lab. Most of the schematics were using the IC chip, and none of them involved the Arduino Nano. The very bottom schematic used an Arduino MKR Zero, so I attempted to translate the pins using that onto my breadboard.
I was unable to get the stepper motor to work. The Arduino serial monitor was outputting the steps so the code was correct, and the motor did start to heat up so I know it was receiving voltage, but it didn’t move.
Lab 3 – In Class Trial
Momo and I attempted the stepper motor lab in class. With Yeseul’s help, it turns out the color orientation of the wires on the stepper motor from the shop is different according to the wiring in the schematics on the lab.
It works!
The steps were very slow, so we reduced the delay to 50 milliseconds.
For the second part of this lab, we ran into another issue where the motor would go counterclockwise, pause for 5 seconds, but then it would continue in the same direction rather than going clockwise. Yeseul helped us troubleshoot again and we used her motor, because there is a mismatch with the leads on the stepper motor we have.
