Overview

The Motor Servo Driver DIY kit allows you to control eight servos at 5V and four DC motors up to 25V at 3 amps with the Quantum platform. This kit brings versatility and permanence to your maker abilities by building once and use to control a combination of servos and motors depending on what you need for your project.

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Hardware Components

The components are part of the DIY Kit or can be sourced separately with help of the BOM:

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Picture	Name	Designator	Quantity

Picture	Name	Designator	Quantity
Open	2x3 male pin header	J9, J10, J11, J12	4
	10k Ω Resistor	R7, R8	2
	47k Ω Resistor	R3, R6	2
	100k Ω Resistor	R9	1
Reads: “103“	10 nf Capacitor	C1, C4	2
Reads: “104“	100 nf Capacitor	C5	1
Reads: “225“	2.2 uf Capacitor	C2, C6	2
Reads: “10uf“ & “50V“	10 uf Polarized Capacitor	C3, C7	2
Reads: ”100uf” & “16V“	100 uf Polarized Capacitor	C8, C9	2
	5.1 V Zener Diode	D1	1
	Mosfet P-Channel	Q1	1
	Terminal	J1, J2, J3, J4, J5, J6, J7, J8	8
Reads: “100uf“ & “50V“	100 uf Polarized Capacitor	C10	1
	Motor Servo Driver PCB	Q-PCB-004	1

Tools Used

PCB Assembly and Soldering

Place groups of components on the board and then solder them to the pads.

Using some form of work holder is advised. You can find a list of suitable work holders on our Recommended Tools List.

We will start by putting all the parts on the table.

First solder the diode on D1.

Next are the resistors. Use the table and pictures to identify them.

• 10k Ω Resistor: R7, R8

• 47k Ω Resistor: R3, R6

• 100k Ω Resistor: R9

Solder the capacitors. The one that reads “103” goes onto C1 and C4. The one that reads “104” at C5. And lastly “225” sits on C2 and C6.

Solder the pin headers on J9, J10, J11 and J12.

Solder the Mosfet P-Channel on Q1.

Solder the polarized capacitors. Remember the longer pin is the positive side. The “10uf” and “50V” goes at C3 and C7. The one that reads “100uf” and “16V” goes at C8 and C9. And finally the “100uf” and “50V” at C10.

Solder the terminal block on J1, J2, J3, J4, J5, J6, J7 and J8.

Your Motor Servo Driver DIY Kit is now ready to be used! The back should look like this.

Connecting to the Builder Base

To connect the DIY Kit to the Builder Base you will need a bunch of male to male jumper wires and your flathead screwdriver.

The DIY Kit can take up to eight servos and 4 motors at the same time. The DIY Kit is powered by the batterys with 5V. The VM terminal can take the 5V from the batterys as well because the motors run with 5-6V but remember that the VM terminal can take up to 25V to power 4 motors. Follow the image above and use the firmware and app you can find in the resources section to use your Motor Servo Driver DIY Kit.

Build the Firmware

Each component is labeled on your PCB ranging from Servo 1-8 and Motor 1-4. When creating the firmware you will need to create channel assignments for each component based on their position on the PCB. You can find the following channel assignments in the graphic and tables below.

Channel Assignments

These tables show the channel assignments for the attached components.

If you want to build a firmware file for a servo now, first you will have to determine which channel your servo is attached to. Let’s say we connected a servo to the ‘Servo 1’ pin headers on the PCB. The channel assignment for that servo in the firmware is channel 3. Your firmware file should look like this.

Keep in mind that the I2C Address can be different for you. If you don’t know how to find the I2C Address follow this Tutorial 1.9 - Find the I2C Address.

If you want to build a firmware file for a motor now, first you will have to determine which channel your motor is attached to. Let’s say we connected it to the channel 4&5. Then your firmware file should look like this.

If your motor is rotating in a different direction than you want, simply change the pins either in the firmware file or the cables attached to the DIY Kit. That should change the direction of the motor.

Build the App

An example app can look like this.

The Slider Analog can be used to control the servo or motor via your dashboard. You can attach a joystick to your project by simply adding a joystick hardware object and connecting it to the left value port of a slider analog object. Then the motor or servo can be controlled by the dashboard and also a joystick for instance. The Manual Ranging object is used to convert the slider movement into numbers or degrees the motor or servo can read. Use the following tables as an example on how to edit your Manual Ranging objects.

For the Servo edit the Manual Ranging object with the following table.

For the Motor edit the Manual Ranging object with the following table.

Projects

Mecanum Car

The project page can be found here Four Motors.

Fist of all, we need to connect the PCB to the Builder Base. For that we simply connect the Builder Base to connectors the 8 connectors on the left side of the DIY Kit. The labeling of the connectors is identifying the terminals clearly. The connections are exactly the same as in the project. Refer to the section here. The Builder Base can now get powered via USB and power the Kit as well, or get powered through the Kit. For that, the connectors on the right side of the Kit have to be powered with 5V. A switch can interrupt the power in this configuration to save energy if for example a battery is used.

Firmware and app are exactly the same! Please refer to the instructions in this section.

Gallery

Resources

App & Firmware

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This DIY Kit page is currently optimized for revision G.

Current revision

Older revisions