why we use l298 motor driver

The L298N  Motor Driver Module is a high voltage Dual H-Bridge manufactured by ST company. It is designed to accept standard TTL voltage levels. H-bridge drivers are used to drive inductive loads that requires forward and reverse function with speed control such as DC Motors, and Stepper Motors. This Dual H-Bridge driver is capable of driving voltages up to 46V and continuous current up to 2A in each channels.



Specifications

• Driver: L298 Dual H Bridge DC Motor Driver IC
• Operating Voltage: 7 to 35V
• Peak current: 2A
• Maximum power consumption: 20W (when the temperature T = 75 °C)
• Driver Board Size: 55mm * 49mm * 33mm (with fixed copper pillar and the heat sink height)
• Driver Board Weight: 33g

Whereto Use L298 IC

Here are few areas where L298 is preferred:
1. L298 is basically used where H- BRIDGE is required.
2. Where a high power motor driver is required. In the marked there are H-bridges like L293 which are used for low powered application while L298 is specially designed for high power applications.
3. Where current control and PWM operable single chip device is needed.
4. The chip is preferred when control unit can only provide TTL outputs

Applications

• Robotic arms
• Robots
• Relay drivers
• Vending machines.
• Industrial machines.
• Engineering systems.
• Measuring instruments.
• Hobby projects.

 Various types of L298n Motor Drivers

      1. L298 Dual H-bridge motor driver

         

          

• Double H driver module uses ST L298N dual full-bridge driver, an integrated monolithic circuit in a 15- lead Multiwatt and PowerSO20 packages. 
• It is a high voltage, high current dual full-bridge driver designed to accept standard TTL logic levels and drive inductive loads such as relays, solenoids, DC and stepping motors.

      2. Motor Driver L298 Module – .NET Gadgeteer Compatible

 

         

• This motor driver module controls the speed and direction on 2 DC motors, up to 40V 3A.
• The module itself is powered and controlled from a gadgeteer mainboard but the motors are powered from a separate power source.

3. Grove – I2C Motor Driver 

          

 

 

        

• It directly controls Stepper Motor or DC Motor. Its heart is a dual channel H-bridge driver chip（L298N）that can handle current up to 2A per channel, controlled by an Atmel ATmega8L which handles the I2C communication with platforms such as Arduino.
• Both motors can be driven simultaneously while set to a different speed and direction. It can power two brushed DC motors or one 4-wire two-phase stepper motor. 

      L298 Pinout (top view)

  

 how to control it with Arduino 

                       

The schematic above shows how to connect the L298 IC to control two motors. There are three input pins for each motor, including Input1 (IN1), Input2 (IN2), and Enable1 (EN1) for Motor1 and Input3, Input4, and Enable2 for Motor2.

Since we will be controlling only one motor in this tutorial, we will connect the Arduino to IN1 (pin 5), IN2 (pin 7), and Enable1 (pin 6) of the L298 IC. Pins 5 and 7 are digital, i.e. ON or OFF inputs, while pin 6 needs a pulse-width modulated (PWM) signal to control the motor speed.

The following table shows which direction the motor will turn based on the digital values of IN1 and IN2.

IN1	IN2	MOTOR
0	0	BRAKE
1	0	FORWARD
0	1	BACKWARD
1	1	BRAKE

IN1 pin of the L298 IC is connected to pin 8 of the Arduino while IN2 is connected to pin 9. These two digital pins of Arduino  control the direction of the motor. The EN A pin of IC is connected to the PWM pin 2 of Arduino. This will control the speed of the motor.
To set the values of Arduino pins 8 and 9, we will use the digitalWrite() function, and to set the value of pin 2, we will use the using analogWrite() function.