Datasheet

This shield has two separate channels, called A and B, that each use 4 of the Arduino pins to
drive or sense the motor. In total there are 8 pins in use on this shield. You can use each
channel separately to drive two DC motors or combine them to drive one unipolar stepper
motor.
The shield's pins, divided by channel are shown in the table below:
Function
pins per Ch.
A
pins per Ch.
B
Direction
D12
D13
PWM
D3
D11
Brake
D9
D8
Current
Sensing
A0
A1
If you don't need the Brake and the Current Sensing and you also need more pins for your
application you can disable this features by cutting the respective jumpers on the back side of
the shield.
The additional sockets on the shield are described as follow:
Screw terminal to connect the motors and their power supply.
2 TinkerKit connectors for two Analog Inputs (in white), connected to A2 and A3.
2 TinkerKit connectors for two Aanlog Outputs (in orange in the middle), connected to
PWM outputs on pins D5 and D6.
2 TinkerKit connectors for the TWI interface (in white with 4 pins), one for input and the
other one for output.
Brushed DC motor. You can drive two Brushed DC motors by connecting the two wires of
each one in the (+) and (-) screw terminals for each channel A and B. In this way you can
control its direction by setting HIGH or LOW the DIR A and DIR B pins, you can control
the speed by varying the PWM A and PWM B duty cycle values. The Brake A and Brake B
pins, if set HIGH, will effectively brake the DC motors rather than let them slow down by
cutting the power. You can measure the current going through the DC motor by reading the
SNS0 and SNS1 pins. On each channel will be a voltage proportional to the measured
current, which can be read as a normal analog input, through the function analogRead() on
the analog input A0 and A1. For your convenience it is calibrated to be 3.3V when the channel
is delivering its maximum possible current, that is 2A.
The maximum length and width of the Motor Shield PCB are 2.7 and 2.1 inches respectively.
Four screw holes allow the board to be attached to a surface or case. Note that the distance
between digital pins 7 and 8 is 160 mil (0.16"), not an even multiple of the 100 mil spacing of
the other pins.