Assembled Raspberry Pi Motor Controller Board Kit

Tim and I are building an automated pet feeder.  One thing we need to do is control a motor with the Raspberry Pi.  There are several ways to do this but I chose to use a controller board that was made to control motors.  I ordered the Raspberry Pi Motor Controller Board Kit from Adafruit.  The kit is made by Ryantech Ltd. and costs about $20 plus shipping.  That's a bit more than I was hoping to spend but I'm pretty sure it will do exactly what I need.  Plus, Tim and I can put it together ourselves.


The board can control up to two motors at once (we are only going to control one motor).  We have a 12v power supply that will connect to the board and provide power to the motor.  The board will let the Pi turn the motor in both directions.

I had Tim do the actual soldering work.  He had it done in about thirty minutes and did a great job.  We applied solder flux to the holes on the PCB to make the soldering a bit easier.  Then, we followed the instructions to solder each part to the PCB.  It really was quite easy.

One other hint related to soldering is to place the component upside down on the work surface and put the board on top of the component.  Gravity will keep the work on the component.  We had to add something under the other end of the PCB to support it.

We did not test the PCB with the Raspberry Pi.  That will come next.




Tags: #raspberrypi #petfeeder