6.a. Remapping the Arduino Connections

For some applications, this shield’s default Arduino pin mappings might not be convenient. For example, maybe you want to use the 16-bit Timer 1 for making music on a buzzer and would rather use PWMs from Timer 0 to control your motor speed. Or maybe you don’t care about monitoring the motor current and would rather use all of your analog inputs for reading sensors. With this in mind, we designed the shield to have break points in the connection between the Arduino pins and the motor drivers. It is easy to cut the connections at these points and establish new connections to replace the broken ones if desired.

The connections between the Arduino pins and the VNH5019 motor driver pins are each made through a pair of 0.1″-spaced holes that are connected on the underside of the shield by a thin trace:

Cuttable traces on the dual VNH5019 motor driver shield for changing default Arduino pin mappings.

The following two diagrams show the default pin mapping for motor drivers 1 and 2:

Dual VNH5019 motor driver shield: Arduino pin mappings for motor driver 1.

Dual VNH5019 motor driver shield: Arduino pin mappings for motor driver 2.

In all cases, the top through-hole of the pair connects to the Arduino pin and the bottom through-hole connects to the motor driver pin. To change one of the default mappings, simply use a knife to cut the trace between the appropriate pair of holes on the underside of the PCB (there is no connection to cut on the topside of the PCB) and run a wire from a different Arduino pin to the bottom hole of the pair to create a new connection. You can later use shorting blocks to restore the default pin mapping if you populate the severed hole pairs with 2×1 pieces of the included 0.1″ male header strip.