Day 8 of 12 Days of Arduino! Today I’m starting a new project, utilizing a 6v geared motor I found on Ebay. It does 30 RPM’s after the reduction, so it should have plenty of torque for most small-scale projects! This particular motor does not have reversible polarity, so it only spins in one direction, but for this simple project that will due perfectly! My goal here was to create the simplest motor controller possible and my original goal was to try and find a motor that I could run directly off the Arduino Uno io pins, which is a recommended 40mA maximum load. After testing the current on the motor I purchased I found that I was drawing 70mA, which was low enough not to fry anything, but probably not going to hold up over time. But that’s fine because a Tip120 is great in this scenario!

6v Geared Motor

Project requires
–Arduino Uno
-Jumper wires
–Tip120 Transistor

Using the analogWrite() method we can give the motor a value ranging from 1-255.

Sketch – Simple Motor

int motor = 3;

void setup () {
pinMode (motor, OUTPUT);
}
void loop () {
analogWrite (motor, 255);
}

Tomorrow we will add a component to our circuit to control our motors output values. Edit: Changed my mind, instead I build the structure and coolant system for our new project, we will wait another day for the controls.

Check out ICStation for a good deal Arduino Uno R3’s and a huge selection of motors:

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