We’ve seen some tiny add-ons for Raspberry Pis and even the Pi Zero in the past, but this motor shim from 4tronix has surprised us the most with its size. About as long as three micro SD cards laid end to end and not much wider (it’s 38mm × 16mm), this tiny bit of PCB promises the ability to control two motors while taking up very little space in your project.

The full article can be found in The MagPi 47

The shim comes as a kit you need to construct: the two motor terminals, a power terminal, and a couple of methods of attaching it to the GPIO ports. It does require a little bit of soldering, but even the most novice wielders of a soldering iron should have no problem with this and be done in about 20 minutes.

Due to how thin the board is (0.8mm, which is tiny), you can easily mount it directly to the Pi Zero if you wish. It does come with some more straightforward methods, as mentioned above: a female header so you can attach it to a Pi Zero with a set of 40 GPIO pins attached, or a male header so it can just slot through the empty pins. It only needs six, as well, and uses the last six pins so that it doesn’t take up the 5V and 3V3 pins at the front of the GPIOs. It’s quite clever, although it does mean you need proper external power for it, like most motor boards.

The code for the board is quite simple, much like for the other 4tronix boards. Getting the Python module from their site lets you import it and give such commands as pzm.forward and pzm.spinRight, and also control the speed. All very easy to use and implement into your project. We feel this particular shim goes beyond robot projects; after all, there are plenty of great dedicated robot-centred motor boards. Motors can do more than turn wheels, after all, although if you’re making a particularly tiny robot, the shim should easily do for that as well.

Last word

5/5

It barely costs more than the Pi Zero, yet it lets you make tiny robots or add motors to any sort of Raspberry Pi project. The minimal assembly is great as well