ESP8266 Community Forum

Hello all. Getting started in electronics. I've had an Arduino-compatible, a BeagleBone Black, and more recently a PocketBeagle and, of course, an ESP8266, Adafruit's Feather Huzzah. Most of what I've been doing is blinking the onboard LEDs, in the coming weeks, it'll be LEDs on a breadboard, and finally a motor (yey! )

In regard to that last item, that motor is, as the subject states, a Tamiya Atomic-Tuned (whatever that means ) motor. Most of the info is in Japanese, although there are a few Arabic numerals — you know, digits 1 through 10 that we're familiar with.

At the top of the back of the package is some Japanese characters, followed by 2.4V (which I think is the input voltage — a few lines down, is some Japanese, then (V) 2.4~3.0, which I'm guessing is the acceptable range of power for the motor).

Back to the first line: (mA) 1,300

Next line is (rpm) 13,700... (rpm) 15,700, and skipping to the last line, the weight and dimensions of the motor.

I expect to use the motor only a few minutes a day, at least initially. Maybe later I'll design and build a robot of some kind, a project that'll keep the motor running more than a few minutes a day. And of course control it via WiFi.

Question: the ESP outputs 3.3V, whereas the motor expects a maximum of 3V. Would feeding the motor 3.3V harm either or both the ESP or the motor? If so, what kind of resistors would I need?

For whatever it may be worth, attached is a scan of the back of the package.

Thanks in advance for any help

You need some kind of "amplifier" to power the motor. The CPU (any kind) can only supply signal currents and not enough power to do real world work.

You need to take into account how the worst case current the motor will draw. The amplifier/switching device needs to be able to handle the current but also the power supply also needs to have that same capacity without causing disruptions in the power.



This is a simple way to drive a motor. The component values need to be determined. Looking at your picture above it looks like the current draw can be 1300mA. (1.3 Amps) You would likely need a 2 amp power supply but eventually you would most likely be using batteries if it is a moving robot.

There are better circuits than the one I posted is there is to be speed control like the following. It does have a peak current specification of 1.8 amps. I don't know if that is sufficient for the above motor.

https://www.robotshop.com/ca/en/drv8838 ... river.html

http://www.ti.com/lit/ds/symlink/drv8838.pdf

Thanks for that comprehensive reply. Neglected to mention that I have a YwRobot power supply on my breadboard, can supply both 3.3 and 5V. Was concerned about the extra .3V to the motor, then you reminded me about running it off a battery. Two 1.5V AA or AAA batteries should do it, just that I'm guessing that the motor will need some kind of battery chamber-and-connector, and I'm too cheap for that -- for the moment anyways.

Resistors are cheaper than a possible chamber-and-connector