SainSmart L293D Motor Drive Shield For Arduino Duemilanove Mega UNO R3 AVR ATMEL

It's the AdaFruit Motorshield v1.0 clone and works fine. I did not realize that AdaFruit meanwhile has moved to v2.0 which uses a lot less pins and has a more versatile stackable design allowing to use multiple shields for even more motors.This one does what it needs to do. Be aware that you either need to use the AdaFruit library or be prepared to reprogram how the pins are used. The design uses a shift/latch to address the motors so the control is a little less direct than a typical HBridge design. Of course you can also use the L293D's directly they are in an IC socket and can easily be taken off the shield if you want to go that path (then it's cheaper to buy just the IC).Beware if you also need SPI communication (used a lot for RF modules) as It uses those pins for the motor control.You may notice that the board has spots for additional capacitors. I first thought they forgot them but it's the same on the original. I think that they are supposed to be used for extra noise suppression but it is better to put them closer to (or even on) the motors. I guess that's why they are missing: it's not as efficient as putting them closer to the source of the noise. It's also possible that they designed the board so clever that the open spots actually act as capacitors but I doubt it.

VERY easy to use with the Adafruit library.Does limit the use of other boards a bit, but you can see from the picture it doesn't have other headers.If you are using all of the motors, it does take up most of the digital IOs, but ONLY if you're using those motors: All 6 analog input pins are available. They can also be used as digital pins (pins #14 thru 19) Digital pin 2, and 13 are not used. The following pins are in use only if the DC/Stepper noted is in use: Digital pin 11: DC Motor #1 / Stepper #1 (activation/speed control) Digital pin 3: DC Motor #2 / Stepper #1 (activation/speed control) Digital pin 5: DC Motor #3 / Stepper #2 (activation/speed control) Digital pin 6: DC Motor #4 / Stepper #2 (activation/speed control)The following pins are in use if any DC/steppers are usedDigital pin 4, 7, 8 and 12 are used to drive the DC/Stepper motors via the 74HC595 serial-to-parallel latchThe following pins are used only if that particular servo is in use:Digitals pin 9: Servo #1 controlDigital pin 10: Servo #2 control

Works with adafruit version 1 motor shield code. All of the analog pins are open, just need header pins installed and you can use them for sensors.If you need more amp handling you can solder another set of the L293D chips right on top of the ones on here, They have parallel capability!I'm using this to make an autonomous car from a old new bright rc truck with a servo. Make sure you check the motor you plan on using this with under load with a multimeter to be sure you won't go over its rating! Cheap and decent board for powering motors can't beat it.

Overall this is a good shield and does what it's supposed to. For reference I'm using it with an Arduino Uno R3. That being said here are the pros and cons:pros: -more powerful than a lot of other shields. It can take a good bit of current or voltage - includes a power led and a reset button just like the arduino - the screw terminals provide a very solid connectioncons: -in my experience, the shield is very temperamental when you connect it to the arduino, a lot of times I have to push it down to get it to really register- This is not a stackable shield and unfortunately that makes getting to the unused pins pretty difficult- You need to use a very specific library of commands to get it to run and the library seems a little bit cumbersome.

So this board seems cool.. I wish they would have thrown on some female pin headers for Analog 0-5, but I went ahead and did that myself..One warning. This will NOT work well with little hobby motors requiring only 3volts.. I have it working for now but only by overpowering the motors which will shorten their life significantly.. Actually come to think of it I have at least 1 motor which no longer works and I did have it hooked up to this board...But I have some 6 volt motors which will be suitable replacements and will work better on this shield.

Works as advertised to drive up to 4 DC motors and up to 2 steppers. The advertised product is a SainSmart clone of the AdaFruit V1 Motor Shield, however what I received was surprisingly an actual AdaFruit version of the shield.Documentation for this item can be found on ladyada's website: https://learn.adafruit.com/adafruit-motor-shieldThis shield utilizes a number of digital I/O pins making stacking it difficult. The newer versions of the AdaFruit shield utilize I2C to limit the number of pins used, and, among other things, permits stacking multiple shields together to control additional motors.

Excellent purchase for the price I got it at, which was roughly $8 at the time of purchasing. There's quite a bit of not so great reviews on this thing, but I had absolutely zero trouble putting a few DC motors on this thing and making a robot out of it. Even if this shield is having some kind of issues with a project that you're working on, you can pull the L293D's off and use them on a breadboard or somewhere else, there's a lot of possibilities with this shield to do.I recommend it personally, but I didn't expect the world out of it nor still do, just keep that in mind.

This product worked perfectly. The fast shipping saved my ass for a big robotics project deadline in a school project.Be aware, the Digital I/O is useless on this board as all the pins are taken up for some reason unknown to me. You can still use the Analog I/O as Digital but there are only 6 Analog I/O's so use them wisely.I know for a fact there are versions of this board with most of the Digital I/O's available for you to solder to at your digression.

Fast service and delivery. Item quality exceeded my expectations. One thing to note for future buyers, this controller is based on the adafruit v1.0 model. Which means the most recent Arduino libraries will not work, need the libraries exclusive to v1.0.

llego en tiempo y forma, funciona correctamente y 100% compatible con el Arduino UNO, muy recomendable para los proyectos de robotica para el manejo de motores DC, servomotores y motores a pulsos.

works as advertised. shipped fast. i used this as the motor driver in my project to create a programmable RC vehicle.

works great