Okay, I’m stuck. I don’ t know what I’m doing wrong or what I need to do next. So, I’m calling upon John Abella, Sandy Noble, and Kongorilla for your help. :)
Here’s where I am:
- The burning!
- At last attempt, I hooked up some small steppers to the Adafruit motor shield, put the shield on my Arduino Uno, hooked up the USB cable and the 9v power adapter.
- I heard a small pop and smelled warm electronics.1
- After the burning
- I can upload and run the Arduino basic blink sketch. I can alter this to change the blinking pattern.
- I can upload and run the Arduino sketches to operate a microservo. I can alter this to change the microservo’s behavior.
- I can upload the Adafruit sketches for steppers – but I can’t make the steppers move.
- I can upload the Polargraph sketch – but I can’t make the steppers do anything.
- I am connecting the steppers to the shield according to the instructions on the Adafruit page: “To connect to our shield, put the wires in this order: Red, Yellow, skip ground, Green, Brown“
- When I connect the 9v power to the Arduino, all it does is make the two chips on the Adafruit motor shield very warm.
Now, I’ve got tons of questions for you:
- Did I ruin my Arduino? I can still run the blink and microservo sketches.
- Did I ruin my motor shield? How can I tell if it is operational? When I connect the power to the Arduino and have the little jumper in place, the green LED is lit up.
- What am I doing wrong?
- What should I try next?
- How should I diagnose a problem?
Posts in the DrawBot Adventure Series
- Wanna make a DrawBot?
- DrawBot Resources and Links: Updated 2013/04/01
- DrawBot, the Adventure Begins
- DrawBots for the slow learner
- DrawBot - Parts Ordered!!!
- DrawBot - The Breakdown
- DrawBot - Parts Shipped!!!
- DrawBot - What would you draw?
- DrawBot - The Plan!
- DrawBot - The Hacks
- DrawBot - Giant Unicorn?
- DrawBot - The Delivery?
- DrawBot - The Delivery, Part II
- DrawBot – The Delivery, Part III
- DrawBot – The Assembly, Part I
- DrawBot – The Software, Part I (and an existential conversation)
- DrawBot – The Delivery, Part IV
- DrawBot – The Assembly, Part II
- DrawBot – The Assembly, Part III
- DrawBot – The Assembly, Part IV
- DrawBot – Design Considerations
- DrawBot – Halp!!! No - seriously, a little help?
- DrawBot – The Face Palm
- DrawBot – The Delivery, Part V
- DrawBot – The Silver Lining of Failure
- DrawBot – The Delivery, Part VI
- DrawBot – The Assembly, Part V
- DrawBot – The Assembly, Part VI
- DrawBot – Printed Parts
- DrawBot – The Assembly, Part VII
- DrawBot – The Operation, Part I
- DrawBot – The Assembly, Part VIII
- DrawBot – The Breakdown, Part II
- DrawBot – Printing!
- DrawBot – Printing, Part II
- DrawBot – Why are you crying?
- DrawBot – Calibration
- DrawBot – Pen Selection
- DrawBot – How to Recover from a Stalled Print!
- DrawBot – Drawing Success(ish)!!!
- DrawBot – Pen Selection, Part II
- DrawBot – Onwards and Upwards!
- DrawBot – Another Successful(ish) Drawing!, and an Update
- Restarting a Stalled DrawBot Drawing
- TSP FTW!
- Speedier DrawBot Drawings
- Two new DrawBot links! And an update!
- Excellent DrawBot Slides
- Another Drawing Robot!!!
- DrawBot Practice Tip: A Watched Pot
- The biggest inkjet printer ever
- Why do DrawBots draw on walls?
- Maze Code + Polargraph?
- All New Polargraph on the way!!!
- Ideas for improving my DrawBot
- DrawBot Aesthetic Re-Design Ideas
- The Eagle Has Landed
- Every Body Needs a Skull
- I think I know what I want to draw next...
- This project is not going to overengineer itself
- Overengineered Spools
- Overengineered Stepper Motor Mounts, Filament Guides
- Overengineered Bolt Endcaps, Case Holder
- Sourcing DrawBot Parts
- DrawBot - A Tour!
- DrawBot - A Preview
- Arduino Powered Drawing Robot Poll
- Building an Arduino Drawing Robot - On The Cheap
- DrawBot - Printed Parts Tour
- Unidentified Foam Object
- Arduino Powered Drawing Robot - Take 2 (Or 3)
- DrawBot, now ACTUALLY wall mounted!
- A Study of Drawing Robot Pen Holders and Design Considerations
- Drawing Robot Pen Holders, Calligraphy Pens, and Thought Experiments
- Ideal Qualities in a Drawing Robot Pen Holder
- Enough talk! Finally a pen holder!
- DrawBot Pen Holder Post Mortem
- To Maker Faire!!!
- Skipping! How could I forget the skipping?!
- Drawing Robot Penmanship
- PlotterBot at Maker Faire Bay Area 2013!
- PlotterBot.com - a new site dedicated to drawing robots
- Now I’ve got a cold and couldn’t smell anything if I wanted [↩]
Sounds like you fried a chip on the shield. It’s probably the L293D motor drivers, perhaps your motors draw too much current? You can replace them with pin-compatible SN754410 ICs that can handle more current, or you can use piggybacked pairs of L293Ds for to split the current draw. Heatsinks couldn’t hurt either.
Did you calculate the current draw for your stepper motors based on voltage and phase resistance to make sure the driver ICs could handle the current?
1+ for what whosawhatsis said, but looking at the motors you got, current should be fine for the L293Ds that are stock.
To be clear, (and to refresh my memory how things should be set up, smart people please correct me), on the shield, you had the power jumper off when this happened, so the arduino was powered by usb, and the 9v adapter was wired to the shield. And, very importantly, you had the polarity of the the adapter connection correct? (You knew which wire was positive and which negative and attached them to the shield appropriately?)
You had the ICs oriented correctly in their sockets (notch up, dot down)?
You checked (with a magnifying glass) for any shorts that could easily happen when soldering the sockets to the shield?
That’s all I can think of now, without seeing what you’ve got.