Superb piece of software and some great guides to make DIY projects. I have had a go at making the Wind Sim and after a few trials with different tubes and fans have something I'm pretty satisfied with.
The question I have however is despite not being of the Electrical mindset, I'd like to understand if the following just isn't suitable or if it's the fans that are requiring too much juice? I bought the following:
DollaTek Stepper Servo Robot Shield v2 with PWM Driver Shield For Arduino
12v 5amp power supply (connected to the shield)
Now the fans work, and the project works fine apart from the fact I have to put one fan into Inputs 1 or 2 and the other into 3 or 4, basically using either side of the shield board. At present this is fine but might like to add two more fans in the future. Have I got a board that is not capable or running the fans properly.
Thanks for looking and hopefully being able to shed some light on this for me.
Hi ! Your fans products page does not specify the amps required, but yes motorshield have a limit Adafruit motor shield V2 is rated for 1.7A (up to 3Amps peak): https://github.com/SHWotever/SimHub/wiki/Arduino-Shake-It#adafruit-motor-shield-v2-or-clone
Basically the shield uses two chips : one for output 1/2, one for 3/4, if you can run one fan on each chip it means you are very close or above of the limit and spreading them on the two chips will allow to keep it a bit cooler and avoid the thermal shutdown.
For more power you have the Monster moto shield, and for the next simhub release (currently at beta stage) i've added support for the pololu dual vnh5019 (or clones) which seems to much more easy to buy now compared to monster shield, those shields allows to drive way higher amps.
Thank you very much for the lightening reply and that does now make sense :0)