Motor Shield

Adafruit Ethernet, Motor, Proto, Wave, Datalogger, GPS Shields - etc!

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tomu
 
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Motor Shield

Post by tomu »

I purchased a few items wanting to break into the stepper motor realm of Uno. My invoice # was 490539. I attempted to get the board programmed in and the hardware hooked up. After probably two weeks of loading and unloading drivers and software and moving the software around and trying to modify the programs for the different ports as well as trying motors and stepper motors in every location, I deduced that I must have a bad motor shield. I was monitoring the example program and realized it stopped at the first motor command. That was a big hint. I ordered a second motor shield on invoice 511945. I put it on the Uno and loaded the example program and it worked immediately. If you have never had a problem with a motor shield, I suppose I just eat the first one, however I took prudent care of the board and to the best of my knowledge did not do anything that should cause a board to completely fail straight out of the box. Having said that, I started off thinking the shield stacking headers were just plug in. I then soldered them in. Still nothing. Please advice. Thank you, Tom

I'm afraid I can't figure out how to send photos. The red error message above says the file is too big. max allowed size is 1MiB. If that is the same as 1MB I'll have to change settings on my camera to have such small file sizes. Something is not right. Please advise. Tom
Last edited by tomu on Wed Jul 09, 2014 10:05 am, edited 1 time in total.

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Franklin97355
 
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Re: Motor Shield

Post by Franklin97355 »

Tom, could you post pictures of both sides of the board for us to see? Thanks.

tomu
 
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Re: Motor Shield

Post by tomu »

attempting to send picture for nth time

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adafruit_support_bill
 
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Re: Motor Shield

Post by adafruit_support_bill »

You can use the "Choose File" and Add the File" buttons below the message editing window. If you re-size them to 800x600 before uploading, you should have no problems. You can resize in most photo processing programs. If not, there are several on-line resizing services.

tomu
 
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Re: Motor Shield

Post by tomu »

I don't see a picture when I view message sent.?

I go down to file Browse... I high lite the Jpeg file I press open I then press the ADD THE FILE bar. Idon't anything indicating that the picture loads. I then press submit. I dropped the size of the files and I'm not seeing the the file > 1MiB message. I attached a file to this

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adafruit_support_bill
 
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Re: Motor Shield

Post by adafruit_support_bill »

Not sure what the problem is there. It is working fine for me here. You might also try uploading to Drop-Box or one of the other free photo sharing sites and post the links here.
Attachments
Ice.JPG
Ice.JPG (143.49 KiB) Viewed 1009 times

tomu
 
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Re: Motor Shield

Post by tomu »

I'll try from the house.

tomu
 
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Re: Motor Shield

Post by tomu »

Because of all the difficulties I'll try to submit one picture at a time.
Attachments
motor shield bottom.jpg
motor shield bottom.jpg (74.81 KiB) Viewed 991 times

tomu
 
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Re: Motor Shield

Post by tomu »

top view. Looks like hours of trying finally pays off.
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motor shield top.jpg
motor shield top.jpg (74.29 KiB) Viewed 991 times

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adafruit_support_bill
 
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Re: Motor Shield

Post by adafruit_support_bill »

From what I can see, the critical solder joints look good. But the photos are too dark to see much else.

There seems to be a darkened area on the top of the M3/M4 H-bridge and the PCA9685 chip as well. Can we get a detail view of that part of the board with a little more light?

tomu
 
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Re: Motor Shield

Post by tomu »

Not sure you need another photo for that. There is discolartion on the IC chips from overspreay of electronic cleaner I used to remove the flux. If you still want a picture I'll get it to you.

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adafruit_support_bill
 
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Re: Motor Shield

Post by adafruit_support_bill »

That sounds like a reasonable explanation. Sometimes we see dark spots on bridge chips that have overheated. But those are typically smaller than what you have there.

Please post the code that you are using to test the board.

tomu
 
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Re: Motor Shield

Post by tomu »

I never got past example programs. I used "motor party". I recall changing the code to try all the channels with both the stepper motor and a dc motor. No channel did anything. I also used "steppertest" and "dcmotor test". Not in that particular order. No sign of life came from running either of them as they were once I loaded them or after simple modifications. Regardless, the same programs I tryed to use on the first motor shield worked perfectly fine on my second purchase.

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adafruit_support_bill
 
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Re: Motor Shield

Post by adafruit_support_bill »

Please post the code that you are using to test the board. There is more than one version of the library.

tomu
 
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Re: Motor Shield

Post by tomu »

Do you normally just hound people until they just get discourged and quite for the$30?

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