Many of the motor shields that we have seen use a large amount of pins on the Arduino which can limit functionality. But not the Motorshield kit from Фdafruit! It uses the handy dandy 2-wire I2C bus to drastically reduce pin usage and also allow you to stack multiple Motorshields to increase your motor count to a whopping 64 steppers or 128 DC motors! The board also includes features such as reverse polarity protection on the input voltage line, large filtering capacitors, and a small prototyping area.

The Motorshield conveniently comes with all the required headers to interface into your Arduino. Please take note though that stacking headers are not included but can be purchased separately if you want to connect additional shields.

Features:

• 2 connections for 5V ‘hobby’ servos connected to the Arduino’s high-resolution dedicated timer – no jitter!
• 4 H-Bridges: TB6612 chipset provides 1.2A per bridge (3A peak) with thermal shutdown protection, internal kickback protection diodes. Can run motors on 4.5VDC to 13.5VDC.
• Up to 4 bi-directional DC motors with individual 8-bit speed selection (so, about 0.5% resolution)
• Up to 2 stepper motors (unipolar or bipolar) with single coil, double coil, interleaved or micro-stepping.
• Motors automatically disabled on power-up
• Big terminal block connectors to easily hook up wires (18-26AWG) and power
• Arduino reset button brought up top
• Polarity protected 2-pin terminal block and jumper to connect external power, for separate logic/motor supplies
• Tested compatible with Arduino UNO, Leonardo, ADK/Mega R3, Due, Diecimila & Duemilanove. Works with Mega/ADK R2 and earlier with 2 wire jumpers.
• Download the easy-to-use Arduino software library, check out the examples and you’re ready to go!

Details:

• Dimensions, assembled: 70mm x 55mm x 10mm 2.7″x2.1″x0.4″
• This board/chip uses I2C 7-bit addresses between 0x60-0x80, selectable with jumpers.