SparkFun Forums

[MichaelK83]

Hi, would anyone be interested in combining 3 Ardumotos on a single Arduino Mega shield? This would be able to run up to 6 DC motors/servos, or up to 3 2-phase steppers. Could be useful for making something like a robot arm or CNC router. Advantages over using 3 separate Arumoto shields: would take less space, and possibly be a little cheaper (only one PCB with just 2/3 the total PCB area).

I'm making some Eagle files just for fun, and was wondering if anyone would find such a board useful. I'm calling it ArdumotoMega for now (until someone asks me to change it).

[MichaelK83]

It looks like there is just enough room on an Arduino Mega shield to squeeze in 4 motor drivers. So I guess I'll be designing two versions: ArdumotoTriMega with 3 motor drivers (6 pwm channels) and ArdumotoQuadMega with 4 drivers (8 pwm channels). They could be useful for all sorts of robotics projects:

TriMega:

• 3-axis CNC router without mill control (3 steppers).
• 6-DOF robot arm (6 servos).
• quadcopter (4 DC motors).
• hexacopter (6 DC motors).

QuadMega:

• 3-axis CNC router with mill control (3 steppers, 1 DC motor).
• octocopter (8 DC motors).

Two TriMegas (stacked):

• Hexapod (12 servos).
• Very basic humanoid robot (12 servos).

That's just a few examples. So let me know if anyone is interested.