motor | electronics | arduino
Hyaline Motor Controller XL i2c (2025)
Control motors using Raspberry Pi Pico (5v-15V, 4 DC motors or 2 stepper motors).
A board for Raspberry Pi Pico compatible boards, designed for controlling motors.
It can be used with pretty much any Pico-like board. It uses an i2c-based interface for controlling the motors, which frees up a lot of gpio for other things – at the expense of a limited PWM frequency of 1.6khz maximum (which can cause audible high frequency noise in some motors).
The board is completely decked out with a bunch of features to make it easy to hack and use it as the “brain” of a motorized project of any kind.
Designed by Mads Kjeldgaard for hyaline.systems.
Features
- Control 4 DC motors or 2 stepper motors
- Control the speed and direction of each motor
- Self-documenting: All pins and connections are written on the board itself.
- Encoder pins broken out for each motor
- All unused gpio pins broken out to headers
- Unused PWM pins broken out (you can control servos or LED’s with these)
- Uses PCA9685 PWM driver via i2c – frees up a lot of pins (but also limits PWM frequency to 1.6khz max)
- NeoPIXEL LED on board for sassy RGB lighting
- RUN-button to allow restarting the Pico (big timesaver when programming it)
- I2C headers including StemmaQT/Qwiic connectors to allow connecting external sensors and devices via i2c.
- Power features:
- 5V-15V input for motors
- Reverse polarity protection
- Onboard 5V regulator – the board only needs one power source to power both motors and the microcontroller board.
- Power outputs for 3.3V, 5V and the motor power supply (after reverse polarity protection circuitry).
- Completely open source.
- 4 x M3 mounting holes
- Includes software examples.
- Small (59.07 mm x 76.33 mm)
Datasheets
Videos
A silly demo: Randomizing the motor speeds and directions to make some bells jingle.
Credits
- Thanks PCBWay for sponsoring the PCB’s for this project during prototyping.
- Thanks Thom, Niklas, Eirik, Fredrik and others for inspiration.
Part of longterm project Hyaline Systems
Open source creative technology for art and music.
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Title: Snippet of Hyphal (2025).
MP3: /audio/hyphal-snippet.mp3
ID: 1770976335172829000
CSS ID: jquery_jplayer_1770976335172829000
Container ID: jp_container_1770976335172829000
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Title: Snippet from The Quiet Zone
MP3: /audio/music/The Quiet Zone - Snippet1.mp3
ID: 1770976335172885000
CSS ID: jquery_jplayer_1770976335172885000
Container ID: jp_container_1770976335172885000
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A problem occurred with the audio player. Here is some debug info:
Title: Geophonic recording of a tree in the wind
MP3: /audio/RootRecordings-2025-08.mp3
ID: 1770976335172950000
CSS ID: jquery_jplayer_1770976335172950000
Container ID: jp_container_1770976335172950000
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A problem occurred with the audio player. Here is some debug info:
Title: Empty Cloud Part 8
MP3: /audio/music/emptycloudpart8.mp3
ID: 1770976335172998000
CSS ID: jquery_jplayer_1770976335172998000
Container ID: jp_container_1770976335172998000
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A problem occurred with the audio player. Here is some debug info:
Title: 15:15 PM (Excerpt)
MP3: /audio/music/1515pmexcerpt.mp3
ID: 1770976335173045000
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Container ID: jp_container_1770976335173045000
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Title: Har Mødt En (Met someone)
MP3: /audio/music/virtorgel.mp3
ID: 1770976335173111000
CSS ID: jquery_jplayer_1770976335173111000
Container ID: jp_container_1770976335173111000
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Title: Binaural rendition of 'Death Told So Clearly To Fuck Off'
MP3: /audio/music/death_fuckoff_binaural.mp3
ID: 1770976335173158000
CSS ID: jquery_jplayer_1770976335173158000
Container ID: jp_container_1770976335173158000
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Title: Akkorder Track 7
MP3: /audio/music/akkordertrack7.mp3
ID: 1770976335173245000
CSS ID: jquery_jplayer_1770976335173245000
Container ID: jp_container_1770976335173245000
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A problem occurred with the audio player. Here is some debug info:
Title: Track 2 from 'Hold Time'
MP3: /audio/music/hold2.mp3
ID: 1770976335173313000
CSS ID: jquery_jplayer_1770976335173313000
Container ID: jp_container_1770976335173313000
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A problem occurred with the audio player. Here is some debug info:
Title: Binaural rendition of 'I Solens Flint 1000 Floder'
MP3: /audio/music/solens.mp3
ID: 1770976335173413000
CSS ID: jquery_jplayer_1770976335173413000
Container ID: jp_container_1770976335173413000
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Title: Track 1 from 'Hollow Body Timbals'
MP3: /audio/music/hollow1.mp3
ID: 1770976335173520000
CSS ID: jquery_jplayer_1770976335173520000
Container ID: jp_container_1770976335173520000
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Title: Sværm
MP3: /audio/music/svaerm.mp3
ID: 1770976335173753000
CSS ID: jquery_jplayer_1770976335173753000
Container ID: jp_container_1770976335173753000
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A problem occurred with the audio player. Here is some debug info:
Title: States Of Emergency track 1
MP3: /audio/music/statestrack1.mp3
ID: 1770976335173814000
CSS ID: jquery_jplayer_1770976335173814000
Container ID: jp_container_1770976335173814000