Supported Motor Drivers

EX‑CommandStation is compatible with a wide variety of motor drivers, also known as “dual H-bridges” and “motor shields”. We’ve sorted them from least difficult to most difficult to use to help you decide what to use. When it comes to selecting a board, some considerations are size, whether it is a shield or needs to be connected with jumper wires, the amount of current you need, and whether it has current sensing capability built-in or if you have to supply it yourself.

If you have trouble finding a particular board from the list, try searching based on it’s name or the type of chip on the board and the terms “H-Bridge” or “Motor Shield”. There are often many places that sell these, especially the Chinese sites like AliExpress and Banggood.

TL;DR (aka short version): We currently recommend the DCC-EX EX-MotorShield8874, and the Arduino Motor Shield R3 or a supported clone like the Deek-Robot.

Fig 135: DCC-EX EX-MotorShield8874 RevA

Fig 136: Deek Robot Motor Shield

Note

Where appropriate, we have used the terms “single” and “dual” to indicate on the non-shield type boards, which ones have just a single H-Bridge for one track and which ones have two. A single H-Bridge board will power your main track, but you will then need another board of some kind to connect to your programming track

What is a Motor Driver?

A motor driver (aka ‘motor controller’, aka ‘motor shield’, aka ‘motor board’) is just a high voltage, high current switch. While initially designed to power electric motors, we use it to create the DCC signal to the track in a clever misapplication of technology. Normally, a pulse width modulated (PWM) signal would be applied to a motor with the PWM pin to control speed and the direction pin would switch the voltage from positive to negative to control the motor spin direction. Instead, we send full DC track voltage to the PWM pin and switch the direction pin at the DCC frequency (around 8000 times a second) to generate the bi-polar square wave. In this way, we use the 5V DC (or 3.3V) microcontroller output to switch the voltage from separate 12-18V DC power supply connected to the Motor Driver, and create a pulse train signal of 1’s and 0’s that a mobile decoder can interpret as commands.

Current list of boards

In this section we outline the various details that we know of related to each of the different boards that we’ve either tested, or know to work based on user feedback.

We’ve compiled this simple summary table to help with this:

Type / Brand	R e c o m m e n d e d	S u p p o r t e d	Com- fort Level	For- mat	S t a c k a b l e	Short Cir- cuit Pro- tect- ion	Cur- rent Sen- se [1]	DC Sup- port	No. Out- puts / Tra- cks	Max Amps [2]	Comments / Notes
DCC-EX EX-MotorShield8874 RevA	Yes	Yes	Conductor	UNO / Mega	Yes [3]	Yes	Yes	Yes	2	5
Arduino Motor Shield R3 [4] [5]	Yes	Yes	Conductor	UNO / Mega	No	Yes	Yes	Yes	2	1.3 - 1.5
Deek-Robot Motor Shield [5]	Yes	Yes	Conductor	UNO / Mega	No	Yes	Yes	Yes	2	1.3 - 1.5
Flashtree Motor Shield	No	Yes	Tinkerer	UNO / Mega	No	Yes	Yes	Yes	2	1.3 - 1.5
DIY More L298NH	No	Yes	Tinkerer	UNO / Mega	No	Yes	Yes	Yes	2	2
YFRobot L298P	No	Yes	Tinkerer	UNO / Mega	No	No	No	No	2	2
L298N (dual)	No	Yes	Engineer		No	No	No	No	2	2	It doesn’t have current sense
Dual Module H-bridge MOSFET IRF3205	No	Yes	Tinkerer		No	No	No	No	2	15
Pololu MC33926	No	Yes	Tinkerer	UNO / Mega	No	No	No	No	2	3	current sense is not acceptable. We recommend using an external current sense board like the MAX471
MiniIBT L6201P (single)	No	Yes	Tinkerer		No	No	?	No	1	5
BTS7960 IBT_2 (single)	No	Yes	Tinkerer		No	No	?	No	1	43
Keyes/Fundumoto (“Beeper Board”)	No	Yes	Engineer	UNO / Mega	No	Yes [4]	Yes [4]	No	2	2
Makerfabs H-Bridge	No	Yes	Engineer		No	No	No	No	2	8
Velleman KA03/VMA03	No	Yes	Engineer		No	No	No	No	2	2
DFRobot 2x2A DC Motor Shield (DRI0009)	No	Yes	Engineer	UNO / Mega	No	No	No	No	2	2
VNH2SP30 - SparkFun Monster Moto and others	-	No	-								Does not work. It can’t switch fast enough to generate a reliable DCC signal
IFX9202ED - Infineon Dual H-Bridge	-	No	-								Does not work. Can’t switch fast enough.
DFRobot Romeo V2	-	No	Engineer	-							Well, an Engineer could perhaps get this one to work.
Kuman Board (and any L293D based boards)	-	No	-								Does not work. Not enough current.
Pololu TB9051FTG based motor shield	-	No	-								Does not work. It can’t switch fast enough to generate a reliable DCC signal

[1]

CV Programming

[2]

Per output

[3]

Requires modification of the board to stack the second board

[4] (1,2,3)

Requires modification of the board to support Current Sense

[5] (1,2)

The Arduino Motor Shield R38 and the Deek-Robot Motor Shield are interchangeably referred to in this documentation as the standard motor driver

TrackManager DC compatible boards

Warning

There are specific pin and hardware requirements in order to support DC mode in TrackManager. Use of any other board than this short list for DC mode is unsupported by the DCC-EX team.

For users wishing to use the new TrackManager DC feature, there are a very limited number of boards available for use, and only this list of boards is supported:

• DCC-EX EX-MotorShield8874 RevA

• Arduino Motor Shield R3

• Deek-Robot Motor Shield

• Flashtree Motor Shield

• DIY More L298NH Motor Shield

Easy to use boards

• DCC-EX EX-MotorShield8874 - 5A [RECOMMENDED]
• Arduino Motor Shield - 1.5A [RECOMMENDED]
• Deek-Robot - 1.5A [RECOMMENDED]
• Flashtree - 1.5A
• DIY More L298NH - 2A
• YFRobot L298P - 2A

Intermediate boards

These boards require wiring.

• L298N (dual) - 2A
• Dual Module H-bridge MOSFET IRF3205 - 15A
• Pololu MC33926 - 3A
• MiniIBT L6201P (single) - 5A
• BTS7960 IBT_2 (single) - 43A

Expert Level Boards

These boards require you to add your own config to the config.h file, and may not have good current sensing. That said, if you buy a separate current sense board, we particularly like the IBT_2 board (though you will need 2 of them or some other board for the programming track)

• Keyes/Fundumoto ("Beeper Board") - 2A
• Makerfabs H-Bridge - 8A
• Velleman KA03/VMA03 - 2A
• DFRobot 2x2A DC Motor Shield (DRI0009) - 2A

Incompatible boards

• VNH2SP30 - SparkFun Monster Moto and others. It can’t switch fast enough to generate a reliable DCC signal

• IFX9202ED - Infineon Dual H-Bridge. Can’t switch fast enough.

• DFRobot Romeo V2 - Well, an Engineer could perhaps get this one to work.

• Kuman Board (and any L293D based boards) - not enough current.

• Pololu TB9051FTG based motor shield. It can’t switch fast enough to generate a reliable DCC signal. Product page .

Other boards

While not fully supported and tested, other boards can potentially be used. Look for the following criteria:

• We recommend a dual h-bridge board or two discrete h-bridge boards. They can be different sizes, one bigger for main track and one smaller for programming track operations.

• It must handle enough current for the layout. 2 amps will drive 3-5 HO scale locomotives.

• It must have working and accurate current sensing (many do not)

• It must be able to switch at least 10000 times per second (some do not)

• Look for an Arduino shield form factor to eliminate wiring (not required but preferred)

Note

Current capabilities of these boards, especially the boards based on the L298 with no heat sink fins like the Arduino Motor Shield can really not deliver 2 Amps. A realistic number would be 1.5 Amps IF you added a heat sink and a cooling fan. If you need 2 Amps or more, you will need to go with a higher current board.

Configuring Motor Drivers

If your board is not in the list of supported motor driver types, or if you need to make changes or have more information about how motor drivers are configured in EX‑CommandStation, see:

• Motor Driver Configuration Guide

High Accuracy Waveform

If you’re experiencing issues with specific decoders and all attempts to get them working are failing, you may need to enable the high accuracy waveform functionality (providing your motor driver supports it).

• High Accuracy Waveform Guide