2Packs L298N Motor Drive Controller Board Module Dual H Bridge DC Stepper For Arduino

I'm using this driver with a 2 Phase Bipolar NEMA17 stepper motor, which draws 2 amps per phase. While it should drive this motor the heat sink is under rated and gets too hot after 5 or 10 seconds. My smaller NEMA17 unipolar stepper motor runs great. Defiantly worth the money and I would buy again, but I need to find another driver for my Bipolar motor.After using this a few times and the device still overheating, with minimal current, I removed the heatsink from the L298 chip and noticed that there was no kind of thermal compound for transferring heat from the L298 to the heat sink. Adding a little silicone thermal compound between the L298 and heat sink helped dissipate the heat, so it did run a little cooler.

So they work great for low current motors like the ones in plastic housings that you get with a lot of beginner robot kits. It's also nice that the 5v line can be used to power a micro controller. These drivers are quite robust in that even pushing them passed what they are rated for, I was unable to kill them. I was attempting to use these to drive four drill motors which I already know draw a maximum of 4.5 amps. The drivers were able to handle two of them, but not consistently. They did get quite hot, and would stop powering on the motors, but once allowed to cool, they still work just fine. I will be saving these for another smaller project but I now need to get something more powerful. Great product.

I used this for a stepper motor project used with an Arduino. It works fine but the driver IC gets extremely hot with continued use. The stepper motor (bipolar) I used is rated at .8 amps with 6.8 ohm windings. I am running the driver with a 24VDC power supply. The convenient feature of this driver is the on board 5VDC output which I am using to power the Arduino.I ended up removing the heatsink and mounted the driver IC to a larger aluminum heatsink that I machined.After prolonged low speed useage the IC definitely gets hot. From what I have read it looks like a PWM driver would have been a better choice.But at least I have a spare if the driver module fails. It is also very reasonably priced so I am not complaining at all.

There's mainly one great positive and one notorious negative about this product.First, the great positive about these motor drivers is their ease of use. Plug in a power supply, two small DC motors, and this thing will work wonders. There didn't seem to be any problems whatsoever while controlling the small 5V, 0.20 Amps DC motor that comes with the Arduino starter pack. analogWrite() had great resolution. I believe those small motors won't take anywhere above 0.35 Amps while loaded, so this motor driver seems suitable.The mild negative about these motor drivers is the voltage drop from source to motor. The potential difference between the motor leads ended up close to 8V while the potential difference between the power supply leads was 12V. all of this is energy that ends up being wasted as heat and heats up the driver.The big negative is the false advertising of up to 2 Amps of current. I got a slightly larger DC motor which unloaded draws 1.8 Amps (measured with multimeter). Engaging this motor for about 10 seconds caused the L298N to heat up massively, to the point where touching the heat sink for more than a second would hurt. Of course, the driver failed and thermally shut down after about 15 seconds, as it reaches threshold operating temperatures. And this was only while engaging ONE of its potential two lines. I tested it with a very large propeller acting as a cooler, and the motor driver successfuly worked for longer periods of time (30-60s); i.e. the heat sink does do some work when forced convection is engaged. However, the moment i plugged in the second motor and about 4 Amps were running through this baby, it could only last for about 5 seconds before the heat sink was too hot to even touch. I was still running the driver within advertised specs and it lasted 5 seconds before thermally shutting down, which means you have to wait at least another 30 seconds before being able to engage it once again.If you wish to run DC motors with this driver, I would highly recommend running motors that won't exceed 0.5 Amps while loaded (expecially if you use its two channels). If you exceed this, the driver will become way too hot and fail. For higher currents, invest some more money and get a better motor driver!

This device was used to drive the motors of the R/C car I build using an Arduino. Here is the list of parts:x1: 5pack 9v Battery Clip with 2.1mm X 5.5mm Male DC Plug for Arduino by Corpcox1: 2 of SMAKN Fr4 Ky-023 Joystick Breakout Module Sensor Shield for Arduino Uno/arduino UNO R3/arduino 2560/arduino 2560 Rx1: Qunqi 2Packs L298N Motor Drive Controller Board Module Dual H Bridge DC Stepper For Arduinox1: Multicolored Breadboard Dupont Jumper Wires – ALLUS J7011 120Pcs 3in1 Ribbon Cables Kit, Male to Male (M/M), Female to Female (F/F), Male to Female (M/F) for Arduino and Raspberry Pix2: Arduino Uno R3 Development Board, Kit Microcontroller Based on ATmega328 and ATMEGA16U2 with USB Cable for Arduino, Originalx1: 10pcs Arduino NRF24L01+ 2.4GHz Wireless RF Transceiver Module NewSold by: Deegoo-FPVx1: 6 AA Battery Holder With 2.1mm x 5.5mm Connector 9V Output 2 Pack by Corpco

I think these needed some at least rudimentary instructions. Luckily they seemed to be exact copies of one of the standard designs for this kind of thing, and I could use them.The screw wire connectors can be hard to use...but considering how cheap these are....uh....

The only issue I could describe would be the heat when you over-power your motor (was a mistake). There's no warning or thermal protection if the heat-sink gets too hot. But keep the power within specs and this thing works as described.I did find that some already made Arduino cars are NOT dimensioned for this driver - this is SMALLER x,y wise but higher than traditional. Keep that in mind when you build with it. It works - no issues there what so ever.