I've been using this board with my Arduino for a couple of years now and am generally happy with it. I added in a few breakout boards now too. I have the outputs connected to relays (both mechanical and SSR) running some light strings (LED and incandescent). But all along I have had an issue with it. I occasionally get a "flash" from most of the channels, meaning that all of the channels light up for a brief instant. This occurred when using the single board without the breakout boards. I am using the Rugged Audio Shield and another shield holding a micro SD card. I tried checking if I was sending a command to the shield to turn on all the lights, but nope. I also did a get at each step to see if something was getting set, but nothing showed up there. Still some more work I plan to do to try to figure out what is going on, but am hoping that someone might have some thoughts.

Can I drive MOSFETs with this board? Building a solar air panels need to drive the fans(12-24 VDC). Thanks

Does this shield have a total current limitation? Can it be used with an external power supply? I'd like to be able to use >1A at the same time or more (120 mA per PWM channel x 12 channels). Sorry if this is answered somewhere in the manuals. I'm quite new to electronics. Thanks for the advice!

Can you recommend a header to allow servos to be plugged into the module?

Hello all, I want to ask about this module, what is the maximum frequency of this pwm module can transfer? is it able to deliver max 500Hz? thank you very much.

I am trying to use this shield to control some some relay boards to control some 120v LED Christmas lights. This board is hooked up to the SainSmart 8-Channel 5V Solid State Relay Module Board and also SainSmart 8-Channel 5V Relay Module. I can't get the lights to fade. It appears that I am getting some PWM going as the LED's on the relay boards are acting as I expect. But the 120v Christmas light LED strings blink instead of fading. Any ideas? I believe that it is a zero crossing issue, but not sure how to fix it. Not sure if the relay module could support this as they are physical relays. But the SSR is advertised as supporting zero crossing. Thanks

Can I use this with a Raspberry Pi? And if so, does anyone have some example code and/or tutorial for hooking it up to the RPi?

I was disappointed to see that this controller doesn't have a "slave select" line for using multiple controllers together. They can be daisy-chained (forming a larger shift register) but there's no built-in provision for having multiple controllers sharing the serial bus with other SPI stuff, or with other controllers in a non-linear topology... Otherwise it looks pretty cool. I guess I could share the serial line by gating the clock... Eh... Also, are those pull-ups on the outputs necessary? I couldn't find anything in the datasheet about it...

Has anyone used Serial Communication with PWM Shield? If I use tlc.update() Serial communication stops. Thanks in advance

I have servo(s06nf) that make my arduino uno reset sometime because it appear to be using to much current. Can I drive such servo with this board provided i source an external power source(7.2 v) ?

I noticed that this board has a place on it for screw terminals for power. It shows "6.5-16V" in the pictures above. Does anyone know which size screw terminals fits it? Do either of the ones below fit?

http://www.sparkfun.com/products/10571

http://www.sparkfun.com/products/8432

Thanks in advance!

Has anyone successfully used this shield in combination with the official ethernet shield?

I'm also a little confused on the exact way I should wire this up, I need to control around 14 channels of LED light strips, each one draws about 500ma@12V.

The strips will have a common anode tied directly to +12V regulated power supply, with the cathode of each strip tied to the drain of an IRF510 mosfet...

I successfully tested a single strip by tieing a digital output to the irf510 gate(130ohm resister to arduino, 10k resistor to ground) and the irf510 source connected to ground.

By my logic, all I believe is necessary is to move the connection from my digital pin, to the signal pin for a channel...

If anyone knows much about this, I would appreciate either confirmation that my logic is not flawed, or a smack on the hand before I hook it all up and fry something...

I bought this shield. I want to control 16 servos.

my servos is... http://www.hobbyking.com/hobbyking/store/__4160__Pico_F_BB_Servo_w_JR_Plug_6_2g_10sec_9kg.html

three servos moves. but many servos dosn't move.

I use arduino in 5v.

Do I need out vcc power ? and some resistance ??

if I try to use the AC adptor(12V / 1A). if Does I need how the resistance?

Please I want to these advices from you.

best

I'm guessing that the selector switch on this board does not like excessive current. I have 15 servos connected to it, I made a 90 degree offset mistake in my program which caused all 15 to stall simultaneously on my robot and next thing smoke pours out of the switch and it all stops.

I have: 8 HS-645MG - Stall current of 450mA ea. 3 HS-488HB - Stall current of 180mA ea. 4 HS-422HB - Stall current of 180mA ea.

Total stall current of 4860mA, I'm guessing the switch is rated around 1A. lol

Any suggestions of what I should do instead?

Does this shield work with the chipkit UNO32 ?

Does anyone know what the Max current is for the PWM?

I have great performance with 2 "big" servos, but when I add a third servo they start acting really funny... I've tested two servo's on many pins, so it's not a signal issue.

The only thing I can think it might be is the Current. I'm driving some: http://servocity.com/html/hs-7980th_servo.html Servos... Unfortunately they are not updated with current requirements. Though I would expect them to be similar to: http://servocity.com/html/hsr-5990tg_servo.html servos at around 360mA each.

Any ideas about the limitations here? I'm running the source through the Ethernet Arduino.

The next thing to try would be to reinforce the traces on the power rail for the servo's and then plug the servo rail in directly to the source with my voltage regulator.

Any Thoughts??

It appears that the breakout holes are not 0.100" apart. Does anyone know how far apart they are and WHY? I'd love to source a header for it and I just found out that the one I ordered doesn't fit.

you forgot to mention that all the PWMs are 12-bit, or 4,096 steps instead of the normal Arduino's 8-bit or 256 steps.

HMMMM. It's worth noting that the signal you get from using this with the Arduino library might not be what you expect. As a constant current sink, this chip will generate a LOWER duty cycle as the value is increased in the code. Applying a value of 4096 will turn it into ESSENTIALLY an open drain. Sending 1 will make it have almost a 100% duty cycle. This can be addressed in code easily by mapping 0,4096,4096,0 etc, but should be remembered. You can also throw a hex inverter in between this unit and your target if you're looking to JUST generate pulses and constant current is unimportant.