My first controller
I’m almost embarrassed to show this. It’s a first effort at designing and building my own prototype. This is an L293 based motor controller and it permits two motors to run forwards or backwards independently from one another. I built it similarly to the Solarbotics L298 based controller by putting red and green LEDs to show motor activity and direction. I built it as an Arduino shield; it fits atop an Arduino, plugging into the female headers and using pins 3, 4, 5, and 6. Pins 3 and 4 enable and set the direction for the A side motor and pins 5 and 6 do the same for motor B.
I built this on a DIY Shield breadboard. That means that with a little fudging, you can convince it to line up with an Arduino like I did. Other than that, it’s no different than any other proto board. You have to create your own circuits by building solder bridges between the solder pads where you wish to direct the circuit.
I said it was an "Eew" shield, didn't I?
I still need to put 0.1uF ceramic capacitors on it to dump motor noise from the circuit and help protect the motor driver. However, it works as it sits, using a circuit I thought up for myself by looking at the chip datasheet for the L293. Electronically speaking, I sure haven’t done anything spectacular, but I did think up and build my own device, which is a reward of its own for me.