Looking at building a wind sim as my first sim hub project. I see that some people use a motorshield and some just wire the PWM fan sensor direct to the arduino and run power independently to the fans. Is there any benefit to one over the other? The direct route seems to remove the cost of the motor shield and any issues with powering higher power fans.
thanks.
I used a motorshield for mine, which made it easy. I will give you this word of warning on windsim fans though....they will make electronic noise, based on the communication frequency assigned in the arduino setup. The higher/faster the PWM frequency, the higher pitched the whine it'll make.
I thought this was an issue with my fan motor's originally, but using a lower communication frequency lowered the whine to a tone that was "less annoying" but I've never found a way to eliminate it entirely....and that sucks.
Hi,
A direct fan connection setup has been working well for me for over a year - nice and simple.