Choosing the Correct Capacitor | adafruit | Page 1

This might be too broad of a question, and like with most things the answer is probably "it depends", but:

How do you go about choosing the right capacitors for components?

As an example, a motor driver IC I'm using states:

Connect PWR a X5R or X7R, 0.1-μF, VM-rated ceramic capacitor and greater than or equal to 10-μF bulk capacitance between the VM and GND pins.

But I'm struggling to determine how to size them correctly for different potential loads, e.g. a brushless motor like https://www.adafruit.com/product/711 or stepper motor like https://www.adafruit.com/product/324 and how the needs might change depending on the voltage, (max? stall?) current, how different coasting can affect that, etc. How should I pick them if I'm building my own circuit with a simpler IC like https://www.adafruit.com/product/807

I see what appear to be capacitors on this motor board https://www.adafruit.com/product/1438 for example, but I'm not sure how those were picked and what limits they might have. There seems to be basically no info on the motor datasheets themselves about this either.

To make things even more complicated, some circuits have a whole array of capacitors like this. My understanding is you want (at least one?) smaller capacitor to handle higher frequency spikes/ripples, and the larger ones for bigger inductive loads etc., but how do you go about picking the specific values, or in this case a whole array of values?

#Choosing the Correct Capacitor