Why use a motor driver board?
A motor driver board is just a convenient way of creating what is known as a "H Bridge". This is an arrangement of 4 (or more, but 4 primary) transistors.

You can make it yourself with discrete transistors, but it is simpler to just use a pre-made chip.



A H Bridge gives you greater control over a motor than a single transistor alone. It allows you to control the direction, which you can't do with a single transistor, and it also gives you access to braking modes where the motor becomes harder to turn thus assisting in slowing down the load.

With a single transistor you can turn the motor on and off (or vary the speed if you use PWM) but that is all.







simulate this circuit &ndash; Schematic created using CircuitLab