A BeagleBone Tutorial - Motor Bridge Cape

About: Hello, the author of the project is an Application Engineer of Seeed Studio. It's great to share this project with the Hackster maker community. I hope you like Seeed Studio, a hardware enabler for IoT applications, which provides services that enable IoT developers to quickly prototype... More information about Seeed Studio »

This project is a tutorial which can teach you how to use the Motor Bridge Cape on BBB or BBG, and I’ll show you a demo that can drive six servos two DC motors and one Stepper motor at one time.

Step 1: About Motor Bridge Cape

The Motor Bridge Cape features bi-directional motor control using two TB6612FNG integrated dual H-bridge, so it can control two stepper motors or four brushed DC motors with 6~15V DC power and about 1A current draw per motor. The cape provides 5V regulated power to BBG or BBB with a max input voltage of 15V. It also has six servo control interface and six expand IO. All the features are provided by the on board STM32F0 coprocessor. The coprocessor can communicate with BeagleBone by I2C or UART interface.

By the time you’re done with the project you will reap the following experience:

• Be familiar with BBG/BBB;
• Be able to use Motor Bridge Cape.

Now, let’s get started.

Add TipAsk QuestionCommentDownload

Step 2: What Do We Need

Stepper Motor *1

DC Motor* 2

Servo* 6

Add TipAsk QuestionCommentDownload

Step 3: Hardware Overview

As the picture shows, the Motor Bridge Cape has a strong ability to drive motors. It’s very appropriate that you make an automation devices such as robots with it.

Add TipAsk QuestionCommentDownload

Step 4: Softdware Work

If this is your first time to use BBG, maybe you can follow this link to get started with your BBG trip.

I assume that you’re already familiar with the Cloud 9 IDE. You should create a new Python file such as motor.py

Input the following command in the terminal

$ git clone https://github.com/Seeed-Studio/MotorBridgeCapeforBBG_BBB

And then copy the code to “/var/lib/cloud9”

$ cp MotorBridgeCapeforBBG_BBB /var/lib/cloud

And open the “MotorBridgeTest.py” file

Run the code, and you’ll find the motor is beginning to turn.

If you want to know more info about Motor Brige Cape, please click here.