Motoruino for creative robotics (arduino compatible board)

Motoruino page: www.guibot.pt/motoruino

It´s since I started with robotics, that I felt the need of having a board where I could directly plug-in my motors, servos, sensors and all the stuff without having to purchase extra shields, or building pcb’s and soldering and troubleshooting and hours and hours of hard labour.. so, I decided to start designing a new Arduino board. When I mention design, I didn’t actualy design the board in cad software, this amazing task was accomplished by my friend David Palma.

We talked a lot about usability, electronics and how to introduce robotics to newbies, and this is the first batch we ordered. We are working on a new batch with more layout improvements.

Main key words:
– easy to use, understand, play with;
– must be a plug-and-roll board;
– to be suitable with shields, and with regular Arduino Diecimilla/Duemillanove boards;
– the usage of the H-Bridge is open, i.e., there aren’t any Arduino output pins assigned, the user can use the bridge the way he/she wants;
– motors supply and PWM pins might be used with external voltage or regulated 5 volts
– motors have 3 different connectors, screws terminals, male headers, JST connectors
– two possible FTDI/USB connections available:
1. USB / TTL convertor, there are some choices on the market for this one, you can have it in the form of a cable, or in the form of a small pcb
2. USB adaptor with the FTDI chip embedded

The board fully assembled is pretty neat and clean.

Next batch will be in black :)

MOTORUINO IN ACTION

35 thoughts on “Motoruino for creative robotics (arduino compatible board)”

  1. I’d like to order an assembled Motoruino board, but I can’t find the link. Are you selling them?

  2. We are working on final tweaks and improvements, within a few weeks we hope to have Motoruinos to sell.

  3. They will be available with and without the components. The release date will be announced soon. Keep in touch

  4. Excellent choices all around, can’t wait to get one!

    Curious about a few things though…
    1) What are the extra “Gnd/+/Vin PWM” pins, next to “guibot”?
    2) Extra pads and hole around R6 and R7… what for?
    3) Since this would be sold w/o parts, would you consider adding a center hole between the crystal’s leads, tied to gnd, for a resonator?

  5. Thank you for your suggestion and opinions, I will try to answer your questions:
    1. with these 3 pins you will be able to change the power source of the PWM pins. Ignore the way they look because we have optimized the layout to the new boards
    2. these are shunts to use with the enable pin, ignore them as well, they have been removed on the new board layout
    3. will consider your suggestion, thanks

    Cheers! ;)

  6. any news?? really looking forward to a couple. do you have an example of a v2 board to show, or even a layout example??

  7. Hi guibot, are you planning on selling the pcb’s to the general public at some point? would like to get my hands on a couple of those babies. thx.

  8. Any progress on the Motoruino boards? And how much are you selling them for?

    The look amazing!

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  10. Hello, first of all, thanks for sharing.
    I downloaded the Motoruino PCB source files from
    http://guibot.pt/files/Motoruino.zip.

    I did a DIY board with your PCB source file using eagle to print the
    board layouts.

    But I realized that GND is not going anywhere. Every pin
    in schematic which should be connected to GND is isolated, not connected
    to any place. How does the GND in the board work?

    I really would like to know if the problem is my Eagle version which
    does not show
    the GND pins connected to something. Or if the PCB source files
    on your web sites are not completed. Suggestions?

    Thanks a lot in advance.
    Rafa

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