Motor shield not outputting anything on any port

[50cal5nip3r]

allright. here this goes.

i try not to ask for help often but im kinda stumped.

i picked up a adafruit Motor shield v1.0 on amazon for a decent price and i finally got arround to trying it out. im using a tamiya duel motor gearbox with the motors swapped to 6v motors. i have a 8v 1a power pack plugged into ext_pwr on the shield and just loaded the motor test sketch from the adafruit example.

as the sketch has an output to M4 i connected one of my motors to M4 and the other left hanging for testing. i loaded the sketch and waited while watching the serial output. i can see that its running but my motor is not. i double checked the connections and everything looks ok but still no movement. i thought it may be an issue with the power pack so i disconnected my motors and connected a 12v 1a power supply for clean power.

i have pulled out my multimeter and checked M4.

if i probe red and black (shown below) i get 1.1mV



if i probe black and ground (below again) i get 11.91V



am i wrong to expect that i should get voltage on both screws of M4 instead of ground? i have changed the code to test M1 - M3 with the same result.

can somebody tell me what im doing wrong?

also if my Mshield is connected to my arduino UNO but not to ext-pwr im still getting voltage to GND and any M-screw. i was under the impression that the arduino powered itself and not the Mshield when the PWR jumper is not in.

[adafruit_support_bill]

Unfortunately, what you have there is not an Adafruit Motor Shield. What was the name of the Amazon Marketplace vendor you got it from?

That board appears to be a copy of an older design with some parts different from the original. They do not have authorization to use our URL on their boards. You should contact the seller and demand a refund.

[50cal5nip3r]

Unfortunately, what you have there is not an Adafruit Motor Shield. What was the name of the Amazon Marketplace vendor you got it from?

That board appears to be a copy of an older design with some parts different from the original. They do not have authorization to use our URL on their boards. You should contact the seller and demand a refund.

the refund is in progress amazon is really cool about that.

this is the link to the listing, http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00813HBBO/ref=oh_details_o05_s00_i00

the picture doesnt show as an adafruit but my board has adafruit logos and urls on it. as you can see from the reviews it seems that everyone else that has recieved one has gotten them to work but they also metion that they are adafruits.


thanks for the info. i will send this one back and hopefully pick one up from this site in the future.(when you have them in stock again )


50cal5nip3r

[adafruit]

can you email us pictures so we can work with amazon to get these removed? support@adafruit.com

[50cal5nip3r]

can you email us pictures so we can work with amazon to get these removed? support@adafruit.com

what would you like pictures of? unfortunately I needed a motor controller for a project and ordered another one that is advertised as the adafruit motor controller kit. however not only did it come fully assembled, it submits the same symptoms as the first one. it seems that many people are selling these online as adafruit kits but are posting copies.

let me know what you need and I will help you in anyway I can.

[adafruit_support_bill]

We are all set with the first board. Amazon has removed the listing. If you can post photos of the new kit board, (and packaging if you still have it) we can verify if it is a genuine board.

As for the symptoms you are seeing, it is normal for some current to 'leak' through the bridges when no external power is applied. But you should be seeing more than a few mV across the motor terminals when running with power connected. Given that you are seeing voltage between one terminal and ground, it would seem that the H-bridge is only half working. What sketch are you running?

[50cal5nip3r]

We are all set with the first board. Amazon has removed the listing. If you can post photos of the new kit board, (and packaging if you still have it) we can verify if it is a genuine board.

As for the symptoms you are seeing, it is normal for some current to 'leak' through the bridges when no external power is applied. But you should be seeing more than a few mV across the motor terminals when running with power connected. Given that you are seeing voltage between one terminal and ground, it would seem that the H-bridge is only half working. What sketch are you running?[/quote]


the new board has the exact same problem. i was just running the motor test sketch. from the AF motor shield download.

the pictures of the new board are attached to this post i can email the invoice and url of the new listing as well.

2013-01-31_Back.jpg (869.43 KiB) Viewed 240 times

2013-01-31_Front angle 1.jpg (1003.1 KiB) Viewed 240 times

2013-01-31_Front angle 2.jpg (947.45 KiB) Viewed 240 times

[adafruit_support_bill]

That is definitely not one of ours.

We'd appreciate it if you could forward the information on the seller. You can either post it here or send email to support@adafruit.com.

For future reference, we do ship worldwide. And these are our authorized distributers.
http://www.adafruit.com/distributors/

[50cal5nip3r]

That is definitely not one of ours.

We'd appreciate it if you could forward the information on the seller. You can either post it here or send email to support@adafruit.com.

For future reference, we do ship worldwide. And these are our authorized distributers.
http://www.adafruit.com/distributors/

i will send an email. i will go back to using my homemade motor controller for now. you guys are still out of stock on yours. thanks


EDIT: Email has been sent to your support address.

thanks again.