While building robots, many a time you need a simple motor controller for the RBPi or the Raspberry Pi. The RTK Motor Control Kit fits these requirements very well, is budget-friendly, works using the GPIO pins and needs very little coding. The self-assembly kit of the RTK Motor Control Board allows easy control of DC motors with your RBPi.
Once you have soldered the few components correctly on the board, plug the assembly on top of an RBPi. You can control the GPIO pins of the RBPi with a programming software such as Python, Scratch or any other. Connect power to the motors and you can start driving the motors in either direction simply by toggling the GPIO pin on or off. The board supports PWM or Pulse Width Modulation. With PWM, you can control the speed of each motor separately.
To program the board and drive a motor with it is as simple as turning a pin on or off. The tutorial section has an example code in Python, but you could use Scratch or any other compatible language as well. The pins you need to toggle for Motor 1 are 17 & 18 and for Motor 2 are 22 & 23. To control motors with the kit you will need a working RBPi board with its power source, one or two DC motors and 4.5-12VDC power sources for the motors.
To assemble the kit you will need a soldering iron of 35W minimum rating and a reel of 60/40 solder wire. Before starting assembly, it is advisable to read the assembly instructions included with the kit.
On unpacking the kit, you will find it containing the RTK-000-001 PCB, an H-Bridge driver IC SN754410NE, three two-way terminal screw blocks, three two-way pin headers, one 26-way pin GPIO header and one 16-pin IC socket. Ensure all parts of the kit are present before beginning the assembly.
Switch on the soldering iron and ensure it is hot. Place the PCB with the writing RTK RPi M.C.B. facing up and towards the right. Place the IC socket in the PCB at the label IC1, taking care to match the notch of the socket with the gap in the silkscreen. Hold the IC socket in place, turn the PCB around and solder all the pins. Solder the three terminal blocks in their positions J1, J2 and J3, ensuring the terminal blocks face outwards. Place the two pin headers into the PCB at positions J4, J5 and J6, taking care to insert the shorter side of their pins into the board and solder them in place.
Insert the RBPi GPIO connector from the bottom side of the board and solder the pins to the top side of the board. This is important, as the assembled board will sit on the RBPi with this connector engaging the GPIO pins of the RBPi.
Don your ESD wrist-strap and insert the H-Bridge IC into its IC socket, ensuring the notch on the IC matches with the notch on the socket. Connect the motors and their power supply with the correct polarity. Plug in the RTK Motor Control Board to the RBPI, and power on the RBPi first and then the motors.
