Testing the motor driver circuit

In this project, we will use a pair of DC motors to drive the robot. We will use a dual H-bridge (SN754410) driver to control the DC motors. We will use a software PWM library written for the Raspberry Pi. We chose DC motors for the following reasons:

1. DC motors are easy to operate and control using an H-bridge interfaced to the Raspberry Pi.

2. There is a software PWM library that makes it easier to control the DC motors.

In this task, we will implement the DC motor control circuit and also write a program to control the DC motors.

Prepare for lift off

We will use the software PWM function available with RPi.GPIO. The software PWM function is available on versions greater than 0.5.3. We need to determine the RPi.GPIO version installed on the Raspberry Pi using a command-line terminal:

python
import RPi.GPIO
RPi.GPIO.VERSION

If the returned value is earlier than 0.53, the package can be updated as follows:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade

We will be making...