Custom Dual Motor Driver Module with DRV8256P from Texas Instruments
For our soccer lightweight robot 2024, I chose to use the DRV8256P motor driver IC. To integrate it effectively into our design, I needed to create a modular driver board capable of controlling two motors, while meeting the driver’s electrical requirements as specified in the Texas Instruments datasheet.
The board had to be:
- Fully compliant with electrical and thermal layout guidelines (e.g. current handling, ground planes, decoupling capacitors, etc.)
- Compatible with the custom controller ports on our robot’s mainboard.
Each motor was controlled by:
- One PWM signal and
- One GPIO signal from the microcontroller.
The DRV8256P driver requires that the PWM input is conditionally switched between two driver ports based on the GPIO state, which I implemented at the circuit level to ensure reliable motor direction control.
The Result
The final result was a compact dual-motor driver module using two DRV8256P ICs. The design considered:
- Proper current routing
- Signal integrity
- Frequency tuning based on the motor specifications of our soccer robot.
The complete assembled version :
This custom module provided smooth and reliable motor control, contributing directly to the robot’s fast and precise movement on the field.
You can have my full project design on GitHub: