Hi,
I have a project where I need to drive 8 "tiles" each one with 6 motors (12v DC) in both directions.
The motors will stay off most of the time, with bursts of 1second in one direction or another, one at a time, arduino controlled.

I am looking for the most efficient, compact and economic way to drive them.

At the moment I use the L293D IC, one can drive 2 motors, but I still end up with 24 ICs, they take up space, and cost.

I can make h-bridges with just transistors and resistors, like the BD139 and BD140. Cost less than L293d
But for each motor I would need 4 transistors, so each tile (6 motors) would be 24 transistors + resistors, quite many, wieght will also add up too much.

Is it possible to use some kind of "multiplexing" of the output of the L293?
If so I could use just a few of them and use some multiplexers to deliver the output to all the motors.
Thank you very much!

 

Just thinking out loud. Could you make it work with a single H-bridge to change polarity, followed by MOSFET arrays to distribute the power? A MOSFET conducts in either direction when the gate is high. If you use ones without body diodes, it won't conduct with the gate held low.