User Manual

Round & round, DC motors are great whenever you
need something to spin. They tend to be faster, stronger
and less expensive than continuous-rotation servos, but
you need a proper DC motor driver to use them. Luckily,
the Crickit can drive two DC motors.
You get 2 independently-controllable brushed DC motor
drives. Each motor can go forwards or backwards, with
8-bit speed control. There's a 5-pin terminal block to
connect motors, 2 pins for each motor and a middle
ground pin. (The ground pin is for some advanced
techniques)
The power to the motors comes from the DC jack, about 5VDC so you can control 3V-6VDC motors, which are very
common. The motors can be bare motors or with a gear-box attached
You won't be able to control 1.5V DC motors, they'll burn out. You might be able to control 6-9VDC motors, but they'll
be a little slow. Same with 12VDC motors. Likewise, you cannot use the Crickit with brush-less (ESC) motors. Those
require a more advanced motor driver!
Each motor has two wires, you can connect the wires either way. If the spin of the motor is opposite what you
want, swap the wires.
Each motor drive has a 1 Amp peak output. After that, the over-current protection will kick in
We don't recommend paralleling the output to get twice the current because the seesaw chip cannot guarantee
© Adafruit Industries
https://learn.adafruit.com/adafruit-crickit-creative-robotic-interactive-
construction-kit
Page 15 of 201