DC Motor Lab

The added components required to complete this lab are a bit intimidating, so I need to slow down to understand every step along the circuit. I completed a preliminary lab in testing and adjusting the speed in one direction of a DC Motor using a potentiometer (videos here). One reason is that the H-bridge lab doesn't appear to explain everything sequentially, so I need to take a step back. This first lab makes sense and the motor responds well - and my cats reacted to it. I wonder if it's normal for a slight burning smell to occur; I kept it running a while and nothing burned out, but hopefully I'm not hurting the situation.

The real H-bridge lab seems to miss something in the explaining. In fact, in the photos the switches change and the LED is left out. I've set up the board exactly as instructed despite the lack of labeling on the H-bridge, and even after checking for proper component directionality, missing pieces and/or code glitches, the motor still does not turn on. I am setting up a help appointment.

After my help from my savior Jenny, it appears the H-bridge was the culprit. We thought maybe either my Arduino had burned out or something wire-related got caught in the breadboard, but just a faulty bridge and the fact that - for whatever reason (the lab online didn't seem to need this) - my motor needed a 9V external power source because it was drawing too much power off my 12V DC adaptor. She helped me get it running so fast that the only gear that I could use was a snug one that is hard to see changing direction, but you can still hear the result on video.

Simple breakthroughs happened for me on this lab at last too. For one, I'm finally starting to read through schematics with a little more precision and understanding, as well as understanding how this translate to more than one viable layout option on the breadboard. I know that's small potatoes for some, but it's important for me. I also learned which way is "up" on the H-bridge, which wasn't explained in the lab. And, headers, which were touched upon briefly in readings but never stressed online, seem to make the wiring more secure when troubleshooting. Finally, I'm just barely getting into tweaking existing code for my own purposes (I'm still not comfortable writing it out from scratch) - I was able to insert an AnalogWrite function to vary the speed of the motor, similar to the prep lab.