I decided to give the L298 a go to see how it works, and was quite happy! It was pretty straightforward, since I already had experience with the TB6612FNG. However, there are some differences. The TB6612FNG has a 'standby' pin which acts as an enable pin for both motors, which I find pretty neat, because it can act as a kill switch, incase something goes wrong. However, this does use up an extra i/o pin, which isn't really a problem (since you can just hook it up to +5V), but is worth mentioning. Another thing that surprised me about the L298 is that it has something called 'current sense' pins. I think they're for measuring current draw from the motors, but I'm not too sure. As a result, in my PCB schematic I left them unconnected. When I tested it out though, it turns out these need to be grounded for the damn thing to work! Not much of a problem, but can still be a pain. At least I didn't send off the design! I made a tutorial on interfacing the thing with Arduino as well, so check it out here!
-nanohex
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