I now believe my post was unclear, so now i will try to clarify.
I have a battery, four motors, and a row of single pole swithes. I would like to flip one switch and have some of the motors run forwards, some backwards, and some stay off. If i ground all the negative leads back to the battery, i can not make them turn backwards. If i ground all the posotive leads, i can not make them run forwards. Is there a way without going to double pole switches? I do not want anything expensive or overly difficult for a newbie to wire. Thanks.


Old post:

I am making an ROV (model submarine) and i have a few wiring questions. I wanted to use a modified playstation controller and i am probably going to soder a board to make diffrent controls. To make it work properly, say when i press button 1, then motor 4 runs forward, 1 runs backwards, and 3 runs forward. I will also have many similar buttons. Since i am using dc motors, i know i have to just switch the polarity, but since i am trying to feed a + to one set and a - to another set, i am unsure of how to wire it up. If i ground the motor's - to the battery, that motor will not work properly in reverse. It seems that i need a switch that connects both a + and -, but that would mean i can not use my contoller. Also i dont want anything fancy or that costs a lot. Is there a way?

Please help.

H bridge can make DC motor to turn both the directions right?

Originally Posted by philba

to answer your direct question, no, you will need double pole switches if you want to keep the electronics out of motor control.

I feel that I should point out that an HBridge will allow you to do this from a single switch and with some additional electronics, you can run the motor at different speeds which may be a big advantage to your ROV.

An H-Bridge is essentially a semiconductor DPDT (Double Pole, Double Throw) switch - it's semiconductor nature makes it very suitable for PWM speed control - at the expense of complexity.

A simpler method, in keeping with the question, is to use a DPDT relay, which does a similar job to an H-bridge, but much simpler.