This L293D Motor Driver Shield for Arduino is probably one of the most versatile on the market and features 2 servo and 4 motor connectors for DC or stepper motors. That makes it a great shield for any robotic project.

This Arduino compatible motor Driver shield is a full-featured product that it can be used to drive 4 DC motor or two 4-wire steppers and two 5v servos. It drives the DC motor and stepper with the L293D, and it drives the servo with Arduino pin9 and pin10.

L293D is a monolithic integrated, high voltage, high current, 4-channel driver. Basically, this means using this chip you can use DC motors and power supplies of up to 36 Volts, that some pretty big motors and the chip can supply a maximum current of 600mA per channel, the L293D chip is also what’s known as a type of H-Bridge. The H-Bridge is typically an electrical circuit that enables a voltage to be applied across a load in either direction to an output, e.g. a motor.

The shield contains two L293D motor drivers and one 74HC595 shift register. The shift register expands 3 pins of the Arduino to 8 pins to control the direction of the motor drivers. The output enables the L293D is directly connected to PWM outputs of the Arduino.

Features of L293D Motor Driver Shield for Arduino:-

• 2 connections for 5V ‘hobby’ servos connected to the Arduino’s high-resolution dedicated timer
  
• 4 H-Bridges: L293D chipset provides 0.6A per bridge (1.2A peak) with thermal shutdown protection, internal kickback protection diodes. Can run motors on 4.5VDC to 25VDC.
  
• Up to 4 bi-directional DC motors with individual 8-bit speed selection (so, about 0.5% resolution)
  
• Up to 2 stepper motors (unipolar or bipolar) with single coil, double coil or interleaved stepping.
  
• Pull down resistors keep motors disabled during power-up
  
• Big terminal block connectors to easily hook up wires (18-26AWG) and power
  
• Arduino reset button brought up top
  
• 2-pin terminal block and jumper to connect external power, for separate logic/motor supplies
  
• Tested compatible with Arduino Mega 1280 & 2560, Diecimila, Duemilanove, and UNO