Updated Adafruit motor shield library & docs

I’ve gone back and spent some time on the Adafruit motor shield library (as well as the Servotimer library, which I seem to be maintaining). Download it here!

  • Motor 3 is motor 3 and motor 4 is motor 4. for real! i even fixed the speed problem. Gah!
  • Microstepping had some strange bug which i swear was not there. anyways, it wont be ‘hiccuping’ any more if you found that annoying
  • Servotimer now compiles all happy for Atmega328P
  • All libraries tested working on IDE v13 (out now!)
  • motor library works fine on 328P (as far as i can tell)
  • http://www.ladyada.net/make/mshield/use.html is more useful, with diagrams and spelled out explanations of how to power things including updated instructions for duemilanove.

Enjoy! And plz post any remaining bugs to the forum thread.

Above, a lovely photo by drew & mithi in the process of making a 3d printer. The precise motor control is aided by an opto quadrature encoder disc. Looks like they used the analog inputs to watch for interrupts and wrote some PID controller code. Hopefully they’ll post it up too!


Adafruit publishes a wide range of writing and video content, including interviews and reporting on the maker market and the wider technology world. Our standards page is intended as a guide to best practices that Adafruit uses, as well as an outline of the ethical standards Adafruit aspires to. While Adafruit is not an independent journalistic institution, Adafruit strives to be a fair, informative, and positive voice within the community – check it out here: adafruit.com/editorialstandards

Stop breadboarding and soldering – start making immediately! Adafruit’s Circuit Playground is jam-packed with LEDs, sensors, buttons, alligator clip pads and more. Build projects with Circuit Playground in a few minutes with the drag-and-drop MakeCode programming site, learn computer science using the CS Discoveries class on code.org, jump into CircuitPython to learn Python and hardware together, TinyGO, or even use the Arduino IDE. Circuit Playground Express is the newest and best Circuit Playground board, with support for CircuitPython, MakeCode, and Arduino. It has a powerful processor, 10 NeoPixels, mini speaker, InfraRed receive and transmit, two buttons, a switch, 14 alligator clip pads, and lots of sensors: capacitive touch, IR proximity, temperature, light, motion and sound. A whole wide world of electronics and coding is waiting for you, and it fits in the palm of your hand.

Have an amazing project to share? The Electronics Show and Tell is every Wednesday at 7:30pm ET! To join, head over to YouTube and check out the show’s live chat and our Discord!

Join us every Wednesday night at 8pm ET for Ask an Engineer!

Join over 38,000+ makers on Adafruit’s Discord channels and be part of the community! http://adafru.it/discord

CircuitPython – The easiest way to program microcontrollers – CircuitPython.org


New Products – Adafruit Industries – Makers, hackers, artists, designers and engineers! — JP’s Product Pick of the Week — 4pm Eastern TODAY! 11/5/24 @adafruit #adafruit #newproductpick

Python for Microcontrollers – Adafruit Daily — Python on Microcontrollers Newsletter: MicroPython v1.24.0 is here, a Halloween Wrap-up and Much More! #CircuitPython #Python #micropython @ThePSF @Raspberry_Pi

EYE on NPI – Adafruit Daily — EYE on NPI Maxim’s Himalaya uSLIC Step-Down Power Module #EyeOnNPI @maximintegrated @digikey

Adafruit IoT Monthly — Halloween, WiLo, and more!

Maker Business – Adafruit Daily — First Solar’s $1.1 billion development of vertically integrated factory in the U.S.

Electronics – Adafruit Daily — Trigger happy oscilloscope?

Get the only spam-free daily newsletter about wearables, running a "maker business", electronic tips and more! Subscribe at AdafruitDaily.com !



3 Comments

  1. They did post a good explanation and their code on their blog : http://abigmagnet.blogspot.com/search/label/Arduino

  2. oh hey, you’re right! i did see it, but i didn’t recognize it as the same people

  3. Actually they are not the same people…
    abigmagnet.blogspot.com is my blog and the folks who took this picture were the ones working on a 3d printer (nice idea that).
    I had been experimenting with PID control to reuse printer motors and the optical quad encoders they often have for position control.

Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.