The people at elabz have designed and built a small stroboscope using an Arduino board, some simple circuitry and a brushless motor retreived from an old CDROM or DVDROM drive. Here it is in action:
Although you may not be interested in a stroboscope, their articles contain an excellent tutorial on how to control brushless DC motors which may have other applications in your projects. When working with external circuitry for prototyping with Arduino boards, people often avoid making their own protoshield due to the perceived costs. However this worry can be avoided, using the Freetronics ProtoShield Basic - inexpensive bare shields that are perfect for experimenting, and available in bulk at a discount:
For more information and the motor tutorial, visit here.
