Motor not working via transistor

5vmotornetduino

I have a very simple circuit as follows

schematic

simulate this circuit – Schematic created using CircuitLab

when the motor is connected in this fashion, the netduino activates the transistor, but nothing happens. If i swap the motor with an LED, the LED does light up, so that incidates that the motor isnt getting enough power…

So i connect the motor direct to power and gnd, and it spins. Does this mean that the transistor is drawing so much current that it is stopping the motor working?

Best Answer

I believe the netduino IO to be 3V3 and this means the emitter of the transistor can never be higher than about 2.7V with any load connected. This is realistically the problem you have - the motor is only receiving about half of the 5V it needs and is therefore stalling. The led works because it only needs a couple of volts (more than likely).

You need to have the motor and diode (same way round as drawing shows) from the collector up to +5V. The emitter needs grounding and the input to the base (from the netduino) goes via a 1k resistor.

enter image description here