sb componentsDC and Stepper Motorshield for Raspberry Pi 4, 3B+, 3, 2, Zero and Zero W, Raspberry Pi Expansion Board Designed to Control Motors and Sensors

Hooked mine up to a RPi 3A and it works a treat. I think the banks of LEDS are a waste of time, probably better to do away with those and provide a means of powering the pi from the board itself instead of them.Other than that, very pleased so far.

Yet another motor driver board for the raspberry pi, this one made by SB Components Ltd. The board, called SB Motor-Shield, is well made using surface mount components. It connects directly to the raspberry pi's 40 pin GPIO header. Whilst fairly robust connected as such, holes on the motor-shield line up with those in the pi thus the 2 boards may be bolted neatly together at the non-header side, using 3mm nylon bolts and 10mm spacers.The board provides the means for controlling 4 dc motors, or 2 stepper motors, using a pair of 20 pin L293DD ICs. The 5v supply required is provided from the pi, but the motor supply (6 -12v) is supplied separately, and connected via a pair of screw terminals on the motor-shield. Connections to the 4 motors are made via 4 pairs of screw terminals on the motor-shield. It should be noted that, unlike boards by many of their competitors, SBC have taken the trouble to fit 0.1uF capacitors on all motor outputs, and also a 100uF capacitor on the 6-12v motor supply.Also provided are 2 so-called IR sensor inputs, essentially each a 3 pin connection, ie 5v, Gnd, and Input. In addition there is an input for an ultrasonic distance measuring sensor, comprising a 4 pin connection, ie 5v, Gnd, Trigger, and Echo. Each of these sensor inputs are ambiguously described as having “3.3v level output protection”. These inputs do not have active protection as provided on some boards which, for example, use 3.3v zeners, opto-isolators, etc, etc, to protect the pi's inputs. The SB Motor-shield simply has resistive dividers which reduce the 5v signal from each of the sensors to 3.3v. This simply means that the normal external potential divider is no longer required when using such sensors with this board.Finally there are 4 direction arrows, each consisting of 5 leds driven via a BC817 transistor. The SBC claims that these arrows can be used to test ones code. Have not yet seen the value of this feature!Documentation comprises an 8 page Guide. The guide, ignoring its obvious errors, is fairly useful, but it is extremely basic; for example, there is no mention of PWM, (normally an essential if one wants ones vehicle to simply move in a relatively straight line). In addition there are 2 files available for download from SBC's Github repository. The first is a library defining various classes such as Motor, Sensor, Arrow, etc. This is provided to facilitate subsequent coding by the user, if the user can use classes! Like the guide, the library file is quite basic and, more importantly, contains fundamental errors. But it is easily edited and once the necessary corrections have been made, it is useful to have. The other file is merely provided to allow the user to set up the motor direction, in so far as motor direction can be reversed by changing its configuration in the user scripts as opposed to swapping wires over. Running this test code allows the user to determine which configuration should be applied to each motor in any of the user's code in order to ensure that each motor rotates in the intended direction. Interesting facility, but hardly essential as one would normally have just swapped the motor wires if found to be incorrect. It also makes a nonsense to have such a 'smart' facility when basic errors exist like the SB library file data relating to the GPIO pins and motors not even agreeing with that actually existing on the circuit.Overall the SB Motor-shield is a useful accessory and offers reasonable value for money, although price varies widely. The product is let down by its limited and error laden documention/support. The guide states “To make the most of the Motor-Shield you need some knowledge of the Python programming language................at the very least you will need to know how to start the Python Editor Idle...... .” This suggests that SBC are targeting users who are experimenting with their raspberry pi, many of which are only starting their ascent of the Python learning curve. If so, then the documentation is seriously lacking in content, and especially so when compared against that provided by the competition, for example, the CamJam Edukit 3, or Pi2Go. Anyone who only just meets the above requirements would find difficulty in attempting to put this board to much use!Thus for rating, whilst the board itself deserves 5 stars, this is reduced to 4 because of the lack of supporting material. However it must be noted that there is a lot of appropriate and helpful information available online; much of it from SBC's competitors!Update Edit: Since this review, have attempted to add IR obstacle sensors. As stated, all sensor inputs are via a 1k/2k resistive divider to drop the 5v signal to 3.3v. Thus each sensor essentially sees a 3k load. This is fine for the US sensor (HC-SR04). However with the IR sensors (I am using the cheap sensors based around the LM393, as readily available on Amazon, Ebay etc) this low value load seriously drags the sensor output voltage down, and such sensors are totally incompatible with this board. A resistive divider based around much higher value resistors may be OK but such cannot be used as the existing resistive dividers are integral with the board. I have got around the problem by using a couple of transistors in emitter follower mode, ie have created a simple low impedance voltage buffer for the output of each of the IR sensors. Would welcome information from other users on any IR obstacle sensors that have been proved to work directly connected as SB intended. If none available then this is a serious design flaw, and had I been aware of such a problem I would have purchased an alternative board.

Component came at a casual for this item package a small bag. It works as expected havent tested the whole potential but adding 1 motor worked.

Voir le titre

This product works great, and has good documentation on a Github website. I was able to wire up my motors and modify the Python library in an afternoon.I like the fact it provide 4 motor controls, not just two like other boards. The other cool feature I wasn't aware of was the LEDs on the board. There are four sets of LEDs that form an arrow in the four different directions - forward, back, left, right. This makes for a cool exercise for my code club students.

A joy to use

Wenn man vier Motoren an zwei H-Brücken schaltet, einen IR-Sensor und zwei Ultraschall-Sensoren an die GPIO-Pins anzuschließen versucht, merkt man schnell, dass die Anzahl der GPIO-Pins begrenzt ist!Mit dem Motorshield wird diesem Problem Abhilfe geschaffen und man kann diese sechs Komponenten mit dem Raspberry Pi verbinden und hat noch alle GPIO-Pins zur Verfügung.Man erhält vom Hersteller fertige Python Skripte, wodurch man sofort loslegen kann.Ich bin begeistert von diesem Motorschield!

This is the best hat i have found to raspberry pi and motors. It supports a large configuration of motor setups and functions great. It is also well documented.