I'm trying to wire and control TB6612FNG Dual Motor Driver Carrier, but am doing something wrong. Why is the motor not running?
I have the vcc and gnd connected to a 5v power source, and ao1 and ao2 connected to my motor.
When connecting the power source directly to the motor, the motor runs.
...
I list the pins I initially had connected that didn't work in the question. What more needs to be described in the question? I list the pin connections that ended up working in my answer. What more needs to be described in my answer?
@antonytrupe the datasheet for tb6612FNG toshiba.com/taec/components2/Datasheet_Sync//261/27197.pdf certainly lists vcc as connection to be made and on page 7's example its connected...and the board really doesn't do more than just break the pins out into headers...so its not unreasonable what he said, based on the board's sheet or the chips
@antonytrupe saying, "the logic poses no confusion to me" seems like a poor answer. If you are writing an answer for others they might very reasonably need help with that.
Say guys, would you transfer content via SPI from board to board? The distance isn't great - maximum 6 inches. The speed isn't very high either but for arguments sake, let's assume it's 1MHz. Someone mentioned to me that I ought to use differential signalling for that, like LVDS or RS422 - but is that overkill for something so simple? The intention is to daisy chain some shift registers, a bit like JTAG does when using multiple devices and a single header.
@saad Depends on the cable and the environment. A bunch of discrete wires flopping around in a cabinet with some high-power, fast-switching stuff like motors? Definitely differential signaling. Shielded cable in a low-noise environment? Really doesn't matter much at all. For 6", discrete wires with SPI should be OK, depending on the system reliability requirements.
@KevinVermeer No motors or anything inductive like that. Really just simple digital electronics. But the intention was to use just a flat ribbon cable, unshielded. I think I ought to be OK, but LVDS doesn't cost too much to put in... maybe I should look at some ICs.
@saad With flat ribbon cable (especially if you can alternate ground wires in the ribbon, or use awesome twisted ribbon cable like this) you should be fine.
@KevinVermeer I actually can use alternate ground wires because I only need 5 wires for SPI (SCK, MISO, MOSI and two Slave Selects) so that leaves plenty of space on a 2x5 header! But, pardon my ignorance, what would having alternate ground wires do?
Does it have to do with the fact that magnetic field would be in the other direction of the return current?
@KevinVermeer Thanks very much! If that's the case, do you think using some other cable would be better or ribbon cable + alternate grounds is a good solution?
@Kortuk well, I think the resistor question was a bit moot for now. Hooked it all up (stacked two 100k for 50kOhm) and the silly thing won't program in circuit
Actually, on second thought, that doesn't look half bad. Everything is at a multiple of 45, the ICs are all in nicely vertically aligned, none of the traces jumps up and down too much.
It might look better if you routed this stuff on a coarser grid, and switched to something finer for linking up to the ICs, but it really doesn't matter. It'll all go under silk anyways.
@KevinVermeer Thanks! What I meant was, I had to use two vias to jump some signals. I feel thats kinda ugly but it's the result of a classic mistake: I didn't finish my entire schematic and left some tiny things out and hence, my placement wasn't optimum! But yes, if I zoom out, the entire board does look alright. I suppose the center is a bit busy due to three large chips and buffers.
I tend to use a grid of 100 mils for placement and about 5-10 for routing. But sometimes I forget when moving a component and it makes things slightly misaligned - to fix that, I just go and copy the coordinates and paste them.
I also made the mistake of not routing my SPI clock to the global clock pins of the CPLD - instead, it was going to a normal IO pin. I learned today that I can run into some timing problems if I don't feed that to the dedicated global clk pins! So that's another thing I had to fix.
