Looking for hardware suggestions and enlightenment

ArduRover ArduBoat
21

i dont know if your matek board has something built in (i guess not). anyway you could use h-bridge and pwm for example like this guy did (its quite a good summary) : GitHub - jazzl0ver/ardupilot-rover-l298n: How to setup Ardupilot based Rover with L298N motor driver to control with reverse simple DC brushed motors

we used L298n (which are really bad, more heater than driver, but cost close to nothing) on a similar setup like that 2 years ago on a “testboat” (piece of styropor)
worked quite well

they are also used in this thread: Radiolink Pixhawk, ArduRover and L298N H Bridge

greetings

22

Brushed ESCs are not that expensive, they will be much more reliable than H bridge drivers especially for high continuous loads.