Hi,

I want two control two motors with my atmega. Can I use an arduino h bridge? if so do I need special programing tools? any advice or tips will be invaluable. thank you in advance.

The controller itself cannot handle the current required to drive motors, however with the addition of an appropriately rated H-Bridge, it can. Not sure what an "Arduino H-Bridge is???" If they are simply DC motors and not steppers, and you only need to drive them in one direction, a simple mosfet will do. You will also need to place diodes in a way that protects both of these solutions from the motor itself. A better explanation if in the motor tutorial in the tutorials section.

L298N based motor driver boards are quite reasonably priced on eBay, I'm not sure you could buy the required parts, have them shipped, and etch your own board for less. That particular design could drive 2 DC motors in both directions, and I do believe the flyback diodes are already in place.

Thank you for the quick response!

I have considered the idea of using the mosfets but I think that for future sake it will be better for me to just get an h bridge that will do what I want. the L298N sounds like exactly what I want I do need both directions seeing as it will help control a gutted rc truck. My question about this board you mention is will I need any special programming tools or can I just hook it up to out pins on atmega and seperate drive power and every thing work? I am very new at this and I am a bit overwhelmed with the diversity of parts out there. Arduino is a robotics microcontroller system that is based around the various atmega chips. I will be getting into it soon! I was hoping to make a smooth transition though cause I know It has different bootloaders and stuff. Anyway the make an h bridge for thier system and thats why I was asking about it. I will look into the L298N now and Hopefully it will do what I want. thanks again!

I am familiar with the arduino, it is essentially the same thing as our nerdkits with all of the fabrication done for us, and a different bootloader, as well as a set of libraries to kickstart development. I just had never heard of an arduino h-bridge. I'm sure there is a "motor shield" out there that is designed to stack with the arduino board.

Anyhow, you can drive the L298 directly with an atmega168, yes. It is as simple as turning one pin on and the other off to go in one direction, and reversing them to change direction. If using a nerdkit controller you do not need any additional programming tools, same with an arduino.

If you wanted to change the bootloader on your microcontroller, or want to put a bootloader on a blank chip, you would then need an external programmer.

Great! Thank you! that sums it up for me! oh and yes i do remember now that the arduino components (add ons) are called shields. Im not sure what its all about yet but I will get into it soon.