Raspberry Pi GPIO PWM Pin

The Raspberry Pi pin 12 on the P1 connector, also known as P1-12, provides pulse-width modulation (PWM) output.

A single hardware PWM pin can be problematic if you are building a robot car and have two motors to control. An alternative option would be to use a digital-to-analogue converter (DAC) IC such as the MCP44802. It has two analogue output channels that are each capable of driving a motor controller IC of the type found on the Gertboard.

Software PWM is not a good idea for driving motors because servos require stability and having the Linux operating system continuously interrupt your routines might not produce very accurate control. It will have the effect of causing jitters within the timing. Software PWM is however useful for creating expressive flashing and fading LEDs, where timing is not critical.

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