Perhaps you’ve been assembling a new robot friend, adding a computer for a brain and other fun personality touches. Now the time has come to let it leave the nest and fly on its own wings– err, wheels!
These durable (but affordable!) plastic gearbox motors (also known as ‘TT’ motors) are an easy, low-cost way to get your projects moving. This is a TT DC Gearbox Motor with a gear ratio of 1:48, and it comes with 2 x 200mm wires with breadboard-friendly 0.1″ male connectors. Perfect for plugging into a breadboard or terminal blocks.
You can power these motors with 3VDC up to 6VDC, they’ll of course go a little faster at the higher voltages. We grabbed one motor and found these stats when running it from a bench-top supply
At 3VDC we measured 150mA @ 120 RPM no-load, and 1.1 Amps when stalled
At 4.5VDC we measured 155mA @ 185 RPM no-load, and 1.2 Amps when stalled
At 6VDC we measured 160mA @ 250 RPM no-load, and 1.5 Amps when stalled
Note that these are very basic motors, and have no built-in encoders, speed control or positional feedback. Voltage goes in, rotation goes out! There will be variation from motor to motor, so a separate feedback system is required if you need precision movement.
Comes 1 x per order, with just the motor + wires. You cannot drive these directly from a microcontroller, a high-current motor driver is required! We recommend our DRV8833 motor driver for these motors, as it works well down to 3V and can be set up with current limiting since the stall current on these can get high. The TB6612 can also be used, it’s on our shields and wings, but you’ll need to supply at least 4.5V – which is what you’ll likely want to run these motors at anyhow!
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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.
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