I am trying to use the motor2040 to control some micro metal gearmotors with soldered encoders. However when loading the single motor example, the leds light up but the motor does not move.
I have tried powering it through both a usb powerbank and a 9v battery, but still no luck.
Also not sure if relevant but I have tested with the encoder example and the encoder seems to work.
Did you solder the Encoders on?
If yes, can you post a picture of the encoder end of the motor.
Motor plugged in A?
Your soldering is a bit rough / messy. Hard to say if it is the issue, but you may want to redo it?
The Ultimate Guide to Soldering
What type of soldering iron did you use?
I don’t have a motor 2040, but I do have an Inventor 2040 W (Pico W Aboard) with two motors with encoders. I’ll go see if I can find it and blow the dust off of it, lol. Then have a look see at that example. I can probably run it on mine with a few edits. Might even be a similar one for mine already to go.
I ran the single_motor example for mine, which is identical to yours with just one exception.
from motor import Motor, motor2040
for me it’s as follows
from inventor import Inventor2040W, MOTOR_A
My example worked on my Inventor 2040.
That’s what I suspected too. I am using a BST-102C, with a flathead tip. In one of the two motors I the plastic melted a bit when soldering, but overall the multimeter shows it fine. I will try to redo this though when I have time, and update with the results.
I tried powering the motors directly through the jst cable, by putting very small cables in the jst ports and they work. So it is not the soldering apparently. Any ideas? I also tried with another motor2040 I had laying around but still not luck.
Update: I also tried again with a 9v, still no luck and the motor2040 seems to get kinda hot.
I ran mine with just the Micro USB connection from my PC. A standard USB A Power source should be enough to run one motor.
Might be time to e-mail tech support directly with a link to this thread.
Contact Us for Raspberry Pi Technical Support - Pimoroni
Are you running it with the UF2 that came on it? Thonny will show you what version its flashed with. If it’s 125.0 it might be worth trying a earlier version.
Releases · pimoroni/pimoroni-pico
Scroll down to an earlier one and click on Assets to see all the releases for that version.
Just tried with 1.23 and 1.24. No luck. I will try to open a support ticket and see what happens.
How are you connecting that 9V battery? I hope that if you’re plugging into your PC, you cut the trace on the rear of the board first!
Can you show a picture of your setup, of the motor2040 running the example (so lights are on) and the motor is connected.
This is somewhat concerning… Even at full motor load the board shouldn’t get noticeably warm. That suggests either board fault (could happen) or a wiring issue. A top-down photo of the board itself would be helpful.
After conversing with the support they pointed me to you, so I will be replying here. I connected the 9v in the external power, without the pc plugged of course. I am sending you the photos I send in the support and also some photos of the program running from usb power of course, because with the external power I am afraid of burning the board with how fast the rp2040 gets hot. I have also noticed that it seems to get noticeably warm from usb too, but not as much as from the external power.
vsys is 1.8 to 5.5V. If I have read the schematic correctly, feeding 9V into the Motor Power, without cutting the EXT PWR to VSYS jumper is likely going to damage something?
