VNH5019 Motor Driver Carrier and Raspberry Pi?

I crossposted this question on stackexchange, you might prefer to answer there: raspberrypi.stackexchange.com/qu … spberry-pi

Do you see any reason why I should not be able to control the VNH5019 Motor Driver Carrier from a Raspberry Pi?

So far I own neither an Arduino nor a Raspberry Pi. I I am a bit confused because the Dual VNH5019 Motor Driver Shield is marketed for Arduino.

My current very limited understanding is that the shield would nicely fit onto an Arduino and is probably supported by Arduino software libraries, but that I could also connect/solder the module “manually” to a Raspberry Pi and hopefully find a way to send the necessary high/low/PWM signals from my (inexisting) Pi software.

Hello.

Our VNH5019 Motor Drivers can be used with a Raspberry Pi, though some models of the Raspberry Pi have only a single hardware PWM pin. There are some software PWM libraries for the Raspberry Pi, though I have not used them and there might be some situations where they do not work well. The purpose of Arduino “Shields” are to provide a standardized mechanical format to connect additional hardware to an Arduino board and the additional software libraries are meant to hide a little bit of the complexity behind controlling the additional circuitry for simple projects. In addition to the standard Arduino pin layout, the Pololu Dual VNH5019 Motor Driver Shield for Arduino has all of the necessary control and power pins broken out on the side of the board as well, which should make it more convenient to connect to the Raspberry Pi.

You might find it useful to go over the software libraries and schematics we discuss on the product page for our Pololu DRV8835 Dual Motor Driver Kit for Raspberry Pi B+. Though the exact wiring of this board will be different than for the VNH5019, the method of control should be very similar.

-Nathan

Hi Nathan, thank you very much for your reply. In the meantime we have also found another forum thread where someone used a very similar Pololu motor driver for exactly the same purpose that we have in mind (controlling a peltier element): http://forum.allaboutcircuits.com/threads/strange-effect-with-h-bridge-pwm-peltier-is-an-lc-filter-needed.30895/

We have now ordered the VNH5019 motor driver and are looking forward to test it :slight_smile:. Yesterday we have received our shiny new Raspberry Pi 2, but the peltier and temperature sensor will take a month or two to arrive from china (hopefully).

We will definitely have a close look at the libraries and schematics that you linked.
– Reto

Hello, Reto.

It looks like they discuss using an LC filter to avoid some strange behavior for the peltier in that thread. They do not report whether the LC filter was successful, but it seems like something that could be helpful. If you try implementing a filter like that, I would be interested to hear how your testing goes.

-Nathan