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The minishield quickly plugs onto an Arduino and runs at such a low voltage that can even run a robot with a single Lipo battery! This tiny shield can handle motor current draw up to 1A per chip so all kinds of motors can be used with it. Bi-directionally control 2 motors and even adjust motor speed on the fly with this handy little board.

The minishield has the all the headers needed to attach it to an Arduino, but keep in mind that you’ll need to solder them on. It connects to the digital pin side of an Arduino and includes such features as an on-board ON-OFF switch, Bi-color LEDs indicating motor direction, and a 4-pin Serial Breakout header which adds power & ground lines to serial pins 0 & 1 for exernal devices such as sensors, LCDs, & wireless modules (bluetooth, Synapse, Xbee, etc). The shield uses Arduino pins 4,5,6,7 as the control lines with pins 5 & 6 being used for PWM as well.

Power Instructions:

Usually the Minishield receives its power from the Arduino below via the Aref pin but if you are drawing a lot of current you’ll want to cut the trace at “a” and power the board externally. To do this, solder on the inlcuded jumper wire and connect it to “5V” on the other side of the Arduino board.

Another option is to use the 3 pin external power port available on the left most side of the Minishield if you’d like to power the Arduino using Minishield.  You can connect the jumper wire from “b” to the Arduino “5V” or “Vin” header and add power to the Minishield’s external power port. If you want a separate supply for the Minishield and Arduino just don’t install the jumper wire.

Specifications:

The DIDEL ROM-Enco is not just a simple encoder that counts the blips as the wheel turns. It’s specially designed to mate with our GM17 gearmotors to offer these features:

We must warn you that to mount these encoders into the GM17 requires some skill. It requires some dismantling and modification to the motor body to install the ROM-Enco. Fortunately, DIDEL has put together an excellent step-by-step set of instructions for this purpose.

Note: This is just the encoder – GM17 gearmotor not included

Alriiiight. This week we’ve got a small handful of new plastic pinions (not to be confused with plastic onions) from Didel. These little units are great for sliding onto pager motors and mating to other gears.

And, as promised last week, we’ve got more Arduino-type-stuff for you to check out. These week we’ve populated the LilyPad category with eight items. As worded by the official description, “LilyPad is a wearable technology developed by Leah Buechley and cooperatively designed by Leah and SparkFun. Each LilyPad was creatively designed to have large connecting pads to allow them to be sewn into clothing. Various input, output, power, and sensor boards are available. They’re even washable!”. Neat stuff! Check out our selection below:LilyPad Arduino Main Board

Well, that about sums it up for another week. I’d just like to take this opportunity on behalf of all the staff at Solarbotics to bid farewell to Mary. She’s been a fantastic getter-of-things-done (official title: Office Elf, Third Class (Promotion Pending)) and a joy to work with. We wish her all the best with that education/school thing that seems to be all the rage with kids these days. Good luck Mary, you’ll be missed!

Didel specializes in making parts for miniature robots, so when they approached us to carry the 18mm wheels and brackets, we had to accept. Using the combination of these wheels and brackets with GM23 Gear Motors is ideal for applications such as tiny robots, business card feeders/dispensers, or use the wheels themselves to couple to something larger. A great feature of the wheels is that they incorporate mounting holes if you like to attach external items to the motors like legs, bigger wheels, blinky lights, etc.

Looking for a bit smaller wheel size? Check out the 18mm wheels.

Includes:

Specifications:

 Note: You’ll need to find your smallest Phillips (PH000) and slotted precision screw drivers or bits for fastening down the hardware.

Didel specializes in making parts for miniature robots, so when they approached us to carry the 18mm wheels and brackets, we had to accept. Using the combination of these wheels & brackets, with GM23 Gear Motors is ideal for applications such as tiny robots, business card feeders/dispensers, or use the wheels themselves to couple to something larger. A great feature of the wheels is that they incorporate mounting holes if you like to attach external items to the motors like legs, bigger wheels, blinky lights, etc.

Looking for a bit larger wheel size? Check out the 32mm wheels.

Includes:

Specifications:

 Note: You’ll need to find your smallest Phillips (PH000) and slotted precision screwdrivers or bits for fastening down the hardware.

Didel Module 0.3 Gears – 12-tooth pinion, 0.78mm bore for shafts usually found on 4mm pager motors.

Measures 3.50 x 4.00 x 4.00mm.

Didel Module 0.3 Gears – 9-tooth pinion, 0.81mm bore, for shafts found usually on 6mm and 7mm pager motors. Measures 4.47 x 3.14 x 3.14mm.

Didel Module 0.3 Gears – 9 tooth pinion, 0.71mm bore for shafts usually found on 4mm diameter pagers. Measures 3.55 x 3.20 x 3.20mm

Didel Module 0.3 Gears – 48/12-tooth spur, 0.76mm bore

As it is, the GM17 has a ratio of 228:1 which makes it great for all sorts of purposes, but a mobile robot platform with 4-5 cm wheels needs a gear ratio of 50-100. Didel has a solution, offering this package which contains two sets of two gears that can convert your GM17 to a 51:1 or 104:1 ratio.

The installation is pretty straightforward – all you have to do is open up you gearmotor by removing the two Phillips screws, replace the lower two gears with the ratio set of your choice, and put it back together. Comes with basic instructions.

Need to further modify your GM17? We also have brackets and encoders.