Running an Arduino and motor off the same supply

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nickwit
 
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Joined: Sat Feb 21, 2009 3:11 am

Running an Arduino and motor off the same supply

Post by nickwit »

Hiya - I'm playing with a little hydroponic-control system... moisture sensor used to trigger a (very) little (1.5V-6V) DC pump.

I'd really like to power both the arduino and the pump with a single AC->DC power-supply.

I'm not sure the best way of doing this... whether to run the pump straight off the Arduino? or somehow run it in parallel, and turn it on with a transistor...

... or what?

Needless to say, am extremely new to all this. Have managed to get all the disparate parts working in principle, but am a bit unsure how to power them all at the same time without having a bunch of different mains-supplies.

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adafruit_support_bill
 
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Re: Running an Arduino and motor off the same supply

Post by adafruit_support_bill »

You don't want to run a motor directly from an Arduino pin - the current draw will be too much and will damage the Arduino. Being a pump motor, I'm assuming that you don't need direction control. So a simple transistor will do.

There is a good tutorial here showing how to wire the motor and transistor. Don't forget the kickback protection diode! http://itp.nyu.edu/physcomp/Tutorials/HighCurrentLoads

nickwit
 
Posts: 10
Joined: Sat Feb 21, 2009 3:11 am

Re: Running an Arduino and motor off the same supply

Post by nickwit »

Fantastic. Thank you.

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