Crank up your robotics with powerful Adafruit DRV8871 motor driver breakout board. This motor driver has a lot of great specs that make it useful for a wide variety of mechatronics. In particular, the simple resistor-set current limiting and auto-magic PWM support make it super easy to use with almost any brushed DC motor.

Check out the specs for the DRV8871:

  • 6.5V to 45V motor power voltage
  • Up to 5.5V logic level on IN pins
  • 565mΩ Typical RDS(on) (high + low)
  • 3.6A peak current
  • PWM control
  • Current limiting/regulation without an inline sense resistor
  • Undervoltage lockout
  • Overcurrent protection
  • Thermal shutdown

Using it is super simple. Connect your motor to the OUT terminal block. Power the board with 6.5-45VDC power on VMotor and provide the H-bridge input control on IN1 and IN2. You can even PWM the inputs and the driver chip will do the right thing.

You can set the current limiting with an external resistor Rlim. We solder in a 30K resistor by default for a ~2A current limit, however you can remove this resistor and/or solder a resistor over it to change the resistance and change the limit.

Each order comes with one fully assembled and tested motor driver breakout, two 2-pin terminal blocks and a small strip of header. Some light soldering is required to attach the header and terminal blocks but its a simple task that can be done with basic soldering equipment.

This guide was first published on Jul 06, 2016. It was last updated on Mar 08, 2024.

This page (Overview) was last updated on Jul 06, 2016.

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