bd65496muv

Hello,

I’ve purchased the bd65496muv (pololu #2960) motor driver. I was hoping to use it with an a-star mini microcontroller. However once I received it and hooked it up I am having trouble getting it to drive a motor. I noticed on it’s product page that it seems to want very high PWM frequencies:

pololu.com/product/2960

… on the order of 500kHz. As far as I can tell this is way beyond the kind of frequency the a-star can deliver, is that right? Is the bd65496muv motor driver board not a good match for the a-star to drive these kinds of motors you sell:

pololu.com/category/167/20d-mm-gearmotors

…are the products I’m trying to put together mismatched? If so could you recommend a good motor driver for those 20mm + an a-star microcontroller?

Hello.

That motor driver can work at frequencies up to 500kHz, but lower frequencies like those generated by the analogWrite() Arduino function running on an A-Star should work. Could you post pictures here that show your board and how you have everything connected including your soldering? Also, could you post simplified test code that shows how you are controlling the INA, INB, and PWM pins?

In general, we recommend using a driver that is able to continuously provide the stall current of the attached motor. The BD65496MUV might be a little underpowered if your application runs those 20d motors at 6V under high loads like rapidly changing the direction of the motors. A MC33926 motor driver carrier would be a more robust driver in a case like that, but I would generally expect the BD65496MUV to be capable of driving those motors in a light load test setup.

-Nathan