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Electrical engineering
Course: Electrical engineering > Unit 7
Lesson 4: Spider Bot- 6th graders learn to build a Spider robot
- Fun with Spider Bot
- Parts list for Spider
- Tools list for Spider
- Spider parts and tools
- Spider's click n' stick
- Battery and motor mounts for Spider
- Click n' stick base & batteries
- Spider's motor controller
- Spider's power switch
- Spider's bezel
- Spider's wheels
- Spider's Arduino Nano
- Motor controller connections
- Spider's LED eyes
- Spider's stabilizer bar
- Spider's romance
- Programming Spider
- Ben Eater's Spider
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Spider's motor controller
In this video we show you how to connect and wire Spider's motor controller. Created by Karl Wendt.
Want to join the conversation?
- What is a L298?(3 votes)
- L298 is a motor controller circuit. It is used to control the speed and the direction of the motors.(1 vote)
- how do you find them and where(1 vote)
- There is a spreadsheet for the parts list.(1 vote)
- i cant fit my motor controller in(1 vote)
- a L298 is a type of camra that monters when its time to get off or theres a virus going on inside what ur using bacley stuff like that(1 vote)
- No. The L298 is a motor driver chip that can control the speed and direction of up to two DC motors.(1 vote)
- can you use other types of motor controllers(1 vote)
- yes, but you have to make sure they will be able to control the motors you have(1 vote)
Video transcript
So in this video,
we're going to show you how to connect the L298
motor controller to the base. And we're also going
to show you how to wire the motors to
the motor controller. So the first thing
we need to do is we're going to put
our bezel around it. And this is part of
the original tap light. And that'll kind
of-- we just want to make sure it fits and see
how the L298 fits in there. And it's a pretty
snug fit, so it's important to get a sense for how
the bezel's going to go around it. We want to make sure
everything is centered. So once that's centered
and set up right, we're going to take
a pencil-- and if you have a pen or whatever, anything
you have to mark the edges, that would be great. I found that a mechanical
pencil works well because it's easy to
get around the edges. So you can sort of see the faint
outline that I've drawn there. And that's going to
allow us to make sure that the motor controller
is in the center. So we're going to put about a
quarter-size blob of hot glue down. And we're going to put our motor
controller right on top of that and line it up with the
marks that we've just made. Now, it's really important that
we line that motor controller up with those marks. If the motor controller is
shifted to one side or another, the bezel won't fit over
the top in the right way, and so it won't
look right, and it won't fit together quite right. It takes a while for that
hot glue to dry and to cure, because there's
a lot of hot glue there, so there's a
lot of thermal mass. And it takes a while
for it to cool down. You can actually
feel the heat sink, which is the part that my
left hand is connected to. You could feel the heat
sink getting warmer, because it's transferring some
of that heat from the hot glue up. So once the hot glue is in
place and the L298 is firmly in place, let's double-check and
make sure that the bezel still fits on over-- around
the wires and the L298. Now remember, there's a bunch
of different connections on the inside of
that bezel, so you might have to rotate
it to get it to fit. So in any case, that's basically
how the bezel's going to fit. And we've got everything the way
we want it, as far as the L298. So now what we're
going to do is we're going to trim down
our motor wires. These are the two
motor wires here. We're going to connect those
to one side of our L298. And then we'll connect
the other two motor wires to the other side of
L298 motor controller. And just right there. And what we'll do is
we're going to strip off a little less than a quarter,
about 1/8 inch of insulation off the edge of the wire. And once we've got that
insulation stripped off of both wires on both sides,
we can go ahead and then start attaching those wires. And you don't need to strip
off a whole lot of insulation. It's actually important that
you strip off only about 1/8 of an inch, maybe just a little
bit more, 3/16 of an inch. Because if you have
too much exposed wire, the positive and negative
terminal could touch, and then they won't work--
the motors work appropriately. You'll get a short. OK, so we're going to loosen
our screws on the motor mount connection there. And then we're going to
put our two motor wires in. And we'll tighten
those screws back down. And that's going to hold
those wires in place. And notice, there's
no exposed wire. It's just insulation
coming out of the motor mount block there,
the motor block. So we're tightening that down. And then we're going to put
our other wire in there. And you can just sort
of push it to the side if it's a little too long. OK, so that's about it.