In the schematic above, I believe the bottom motor lead should go to out3 instead of out4 on the L298n.
Would this be similarly applicable to any dual output motor driver for normal DC motors? Like would the generic green MOSFET H-Bridge motor driver work for this by just using 3 of the 4 output pins?
Hi @jakabo27 ,
you have to be able to control their bridges seperately. The one you link has SPEED/DIR control, one (PWM) line for speed and one (digital high/low) line for direction. So you can’t control the bridges separately.
Also, the FETs are driven by a driver IC, which isn’t further documented on the product page, but which will often prevent the type of control you need to drive BLDCs - typically it won’t let you switch both high FETs on. Unfortunately, most of the cheap boards out there are “more advanced” than the L298N in this way, which makes them better for DC-motor control, but unsuitable for misuse as BLDC drivers.
However, poking around the associated products, this one might work for you. That’s not a recommendation, I haven’t tried it, but it seems it has no driver, just optoisolators, and individual control of the 4 FETs. So 3 of these should drive 2xBLDCs. I might try it out.
Hey @happytm - Maybe it will work with this chip. It does look like you can control the bridges separately. But it also has all kinds of protections, so hard to say. I doubt very much the current sensing it has will be useful for BLDC driving.
I don’t think it’s a good idea to use the L298 for anything serious. It is an old design based on bipolar transistors ( look at the huge losses in the power stage ) It’s intended use are 130 style toy motors like these : https://www.adafruit.com/product/711
Will this work will this work with tb6612?
For steppers yes, but for BLDCs not unfortunately.
For example, in the datasheet they say that if both IN1 and IN2 inputs are LOW the OUT1 and OUT2 are open (high impedance).
One more driver to discuss among all of you experts:
Arduino library with examples:
Thanks.
Hey @happytm
I fear not - at least not for FOC control. While it looks good from the truth table and being able to control the two half-bridges separately, if you look at Table 4 there is a delay when switching the direction using INa/INb - a delay of 600-1800µs - this will be too much to use PWM on this pin.
Unfortunately this chip is designed to support PWM only on the PWM-pin, for speed control, but you can’t PWM the bridges seperately.
I see now. Thanks for your feedback.
Would the DRV8833 be usable for drone motors?
DRV8833 data sheet, product information and support | TI.com
Hey,
I was seeking for a small driver board for BLDC easy to integrate in my project. The Drotek L6234
breakout board was welldone but sourcing looks hard. In the post was mentioned the tb6612 and I decided to test by implementing two of these stacked altogether and using the half of the H-bridge by output. This way no issue with high impedance logic. It was also mentioned in another post but apparently without success. The logic I followed is indicated in the table below and you will find the wiring too. Inputs are connected to the PWM and Enable to Standby. The IN1&2 are connected to the respective logic level. It requires pin header modifications and also bondings but with dimensions of 2x2x1.5cm it makes compact driver board. It is available for around 1€ by board on Chinese websites so it looks to me cheap solution compatible with a 3S Lipo for a current of 1.2A continuous and 3.2A peak. Looks to work well for me.
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Hey @CREGIS21 , that’s a nice discovery! I will try this out when I get back home from vacation, I have a bunch of these boards lying around at home. This would indeed be a very cheap and small solution!
Great! You will have to add some straps and modify pin header because there is not full pin to pin matching between stacked boards. Look at the schematic for guiding you.
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Very nice!
I was wondering if the same could be done with the drv8833 based chips. it seems to have the same issue.
but both of these chips seem like a good choice for stepper control. 
This is interesting board for high power brush motors. It has dual H-Bridges with 24V 30A. Nice thing is it is Arduino uno hat.
More information for chip used and schematic design here - VNH5019 Motor Driver Carrier 12A
Can it be used with SimpleFOC?
Thanks.
I have bunch of DRV 8833 and some cheapo gimbal motors will test later on today it’s behaviour in FOC.
50Khz PWM freq and 500mA per bridge can’t expect it to side with l6432 but can try. Will keep y’all posted.
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I am looking forward to hear about it!
You might need to do a similar thing @CREGIS21 has proposed for this to work though.
Because according to this table as for the table in the @CREGIS21 case, it is not possible to have two phases (of each half-bridge) on at the same time. Which means that you cannot use 3 out of 4 phases of this driver like it was possible for the L298N.
Now you will be able to use 2 drv8833 drivers and use 3 half-bridges out of 4 and for each one of them use only one output.
However an important thing to note is that this driver will work perfectly with a stepper motor
That was my initial plan use 2x8833 (since their relative small size factor) stacked on top of another. Use each half bridge to drive one phase and then not utilize 4th one at all. Would give me what approx 500mA per phase rms max which on paper is quite ok to drive something like 2208.