Explorer pHAT and Motors

Discussion Raspberry Pi
1

Hi All,

I’m fairly new to using the Pi with GPIO.

I’ve got a Pi Zero and I am planning on using the Black Hat Hack3r with the Explorer pHAT and Scroll pHat on a robot that I am planning to build.

The robot is based on a chassis that I bought a while back DFrobot 4wd Mobile Platform (https://www.dfrobot.com/index.php?route=product/product&path=37_111&product_id=97) to use with an Ardunio but I never got to it.

My question relates to the motor outputs on the Explorer pHAT, of which I believe there only 2 available while the chassis has 4 motors.

Is it possible to wire the two motors on the left hand side to one motor output and the two motors on the right hand side to the other output? This would allow me to run them in pairs, either running both pairs at once to go straight forward/back or individual pairs to turn (left only for left and right only for right).

The spec of the motors are as follows:

SPECIFICATION
Electrical Characteristics:

Operating Voltage Range: 3~7.5V
Rated Voltage: 6V
Max. No-load Current(3V): 140 mA
Max. No-load Current(6V): 170 mA
No-load Speed(3V): 90 rpm
No-load Speed(6V): 160 rpm
Max. Output Torque: 0.8 kgf.cm
Max. Stall Current: 2.8 A

Operating Conditions:
Rated Load: 0.2 kgf.cm
Operating Temperature: -10~+60 ℃
Storage Temperature: -30~+85 ℃
Motor Type: 130

Mechanical Characteristics:
Output Mode: 2 sides
Gear Ratio: 1:120
Max. Diameter of Output Axle: 5.4 mm
Net Weight: 45 g

I’m not using the encoders that are optional.

Thanks for your help.

Cheers,

Tony.

2

Should be perfectly possible, in fact I believe @sandyjmacdonald recently put together a robot using Explorer pHAT that does just this with our micro metal gearmotors.

3

Absolutely possible!

I stripped the male ends of four jumper wires, removed the plastic shrouds from another four, and then soldered the stripped ends to the metal pins on the male ends. Then I heat-shrinked the bodged together wires to prevent any short circuit naughtiness.

Although the simple solution is just to stick a mini breadboard on the top of the chassis and use some extra jumper wires. But what fun is that?

Here’s the video:

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