This project is meant to turn any Arduino or clone into a powerful I2C motor controller with dual encoder support. It supports a variety of H-Bridge chips and modules as long as they use they use two direction pins and one PWM pin per channel. Most analog motor driver chips you can find work like that.

Here are my recommendations:

• L298 You can usually find breakout boards for these dual 2A motor drivers at around 2-5$ everywhere around the world. Here's an example from Aliexpress. They make a great pair with TT style motors, and other low-current options. However these chips are very sensitive to loads over the 2A limit.

• TB6612FNG At arount the same price as the L298, these modules have a higher peak current of 3.2A, making them a great to pair with Pololu Micro Motors / N20 Motors.

• VNH30x Series Originally designed for powersteering and other automotive uses, the is a great option for large(r) motors. Each chip can support up to 15A and 30A peak loads on one channel. Additionally these chips have an analog output pin called CS, or Current Sense. You can read the voltage on this pin to see how much current each motor uses. This will be supported in later versions of the firmware. There are a few breakout boards on the market, such as this one by Pololu.

Motorhead is also available as a package for robot-block, offering a plug-and-play ROS experience.

k with a variety of different boards, some specifics need to be configured using variables.

Build Variables

To compile the arduino sketch at build-time, some information about your specific microcontroller is needed. Build variables can be defined in balena.yml inside the .balena folder.

Variable	Description	Example
ARDUINO_CORE	The microcontroller family your board is based on	arduino:avr
ARDUINO_FQBN

Runtime Variables

These variables can be defined on the dashboard, or in the docker compose.

Variable	Description	Example
AVRDUDE_CPU	Name of the microcontroller your board is based on	atmega328p
MONITOR_BAUD	Baud rate for miniterm (after flashing, the arduino service opens a serial terminal for monitoring)	9600
SERIAL_PORT	Serial port your board is connected to.	/dev/ttyUSB0

I2C Registers

Mode Configuration

Register	Description	R/W
0xFF	I2C Mode	R/W
0xFD	UART Mode	R/W

Pin Configuration

Register	Description	R/W
0x00	Left Motor PWM	R/W
0x01	Left Motor A	R/W
0x02	Left Motor B	R/W
0x03	Left Encoder A	R/W
0x04	Left Encoder B	R/W
0x05	Right Motor A	R/W
0x06	Right Motor B	R/W
0x07	Right Motor PWM	R/W
0x0A	Right Encoder A	R/W
0x0B	Right Encoder B	R/W

Motors

Motor Left

Register	Description	R/W
0x10	Speed	R/W
0x11	Direction	R/W
0x12	Go	W

Motor Right

Register	Description	R/W
0x20	Speed	R/W
0x21	Direction	R/W
0x22	Go	W

Encoders

Register	Description	R/W
0x30	Count Left	R/W
0x31	Count Right	R