Actuators & Motors

Actuators are the parts that make something physically move — servos, DC gear motors, stepper motors, brushless motors with ESCs, pumps and the driver boards that sit between them and your microcontroller. Whether you are building a robot arm, a line-following car, an automatic gate or a final-year project that has to demonstrate motion, the choice of motor shapes everything else in the design.

Match the motor to the job. A hobby servo like the MG946R gives you precise angular position over a limited sweep and is ideal for arms, grippers and steering linkages. A DC gear motor such as the N20 or a TT motor with wheels gives continuous rotation with torque traded against speed by the gearbox ratio. A stepper motor gives you repeatable, countable steps and is what you want for anything positioning-critical. Brushless motors with an ESC are the high-power option for drones and RC aircraft.

One thing to plan for early: motors draw far more current than a microcontroller can supply, and stall current is much higher than running current. Power them from a separate supply with a common ground, and use a driver board rather than wiring a motor to a GPIO pin. We stock the L298N, L293D and DRV8833 drivers alongside the motors themselves.