I am creating a six-wheeled robot which I am controlling using a PS2 remote and an Arduino. I am using a L298N Motor/Stepper Driver as the method for controlling the six motors.
The motors are designed to run off a voltage of 7.2 V each. I am using 6 × 1.5 V AA batteries in series in a battery pack for powering the motors. I am using 6 × 1.2 V AA batteries in series in a battery pack for powering the Arduino.
The structure for how the wires connect up to the motors that came with the robot chassis, the motor driver and the Arduino is as follows:
simulate this circuit – Schematic created using CircuitLab
(This is my first ever schematic and took me 2 hours to do so I tried by best with it).
The two blue X points show where the robot chassis came with one wire splitting into three separate wires.
- When I place the voltmeter across the 12 V+ point and the GND points on the motor driver I get 0 V but when I place the voltmeter across the 12 V+ point and another GND pin on the Arduino I get the full 9 V.
- When I place my voltmeter across either of the 2 X points I get a voltage of around 3 V which is not enough to power each of the three motors on each side of the motor driver. The motors still move at quite a fast rate but when placed onto any type of floor, the wheels don't seem to move at all and the power given off by the motors is not enough to make the robot move.
I tried fixing this by increasing the power supply given to the motor driver by increasing it from 9 V to 15 V.
- When I place the voltmeter across the 12 V+ point and the GND points on the motor driver I get 0 V but when I place the voltmeter across the 12 V+ point and another GND pin on the Arduino I get the full 15 V.
- When I placed the voltmeter across the 2 X points I got around 10 V which was more than the three motors on each of the two sides needed. The motors went extremely fast when this happened. But when I placed it back onto the floor afterwards with 10 V the robot still did not move.
I have double checked my code and it does do the correct thing.
Here are links to items that I used: