DRV8835 Dual Motor Driver Kit for Raspberry Pi B+
his compact expansion board plugs directly into the GPIO header on a Raspberry Pi B+ and provides an easy and low-cost solution for driving a pair of small brushed DC motors. Its integrated DRV8835 dual motor driver allows it to operate from 1.5 V to 11 V, making it a great control option for low-voltage motors. The board can deliver a continuous 1.2A (1.5A peak) per motor, or a continuous 2.4A (3A peak) to a single motor when configured with both channels connected in parallel.
Overview
This motor driver kit and its corresponding Python library make it easy to control a pair of bidirectional, brushed DC motors with a Raspberry Pi Model B+. The expansion board features Texas Instruments’ DRV8835 dual H-bridge motor driver IC, which allows it to operate from 1.5V to 11V and makes it particularly well suited for driving small, low-voltage motors. The board can deliver a continuous 1.2A per channel and tolerate peak currents up to 1.5A per channel for a few seconds, and the channels can be optionally configured to run in parallel to deliver twice the current to a single motor. The board ships fully populated with its SMD components, including the DRV8835 driver and a FET for reverse battery protection; header pins for interfacing with a Raspberry Pi and terminal blocks for connecting motors and power are included but are not soldered in (see the Assembly with included hardware section below).
The board uses GPIO pins 5, 6, 12, and 13 to control the motor driver, making use of the Raspberry Pi’s hardware PWM outputs, although the pin mappings can be customized if the defaults are not convenient. Note that it is designed specifically for the Model B+ version of the Raspberry Pi; it is not practical to use this expansion board with a Raspberry Pi Model A or Model B due to differences in their pinout and form factor.
Dimensions
| Size: | 1.7″ × 0.65″1 |
|---|---|
| Weight: | 2.3 g1 |
General specifications
| Motor driver: | DRV8835 |
|---|---|
| Motor channels: | 2 |
| Minimum operating voltage: | 1.5 V2 |
| Maximum operating voltage: | 11 V |
| Continuous output current per channel: | 1.2 A3 |
| Peak output current per channel: | 1.5 A |
| Continuous paralleled output current: | 2.4 A3 |
| Maximum PWM frequency: | 250 kHz |
| Reverse voltage protection?: | Y |