Sparkfun stepper motor and easy driver v3

This is a video of the stepper motor that Sparkfun sells as well as the easy driver that they sell. They are hooked up together and then the arduino controls the easy driver. The easy driver is powered by a 14.4v drill battery and the arduino is powered by 5v usb power. The program on the computer was written in visual studio 2008 and it essentially forms the correct output string (character count, direction, value) and then sends the string out the serial port. Coding the arduino was the interesting part, I have written a program that allows %100 percent control of the stepper motor down to a single microstep in either direction forward or backwards. The maximum value that it can do at once is 65,535 which is the max capacity of the integer i used to store the value on the arduino.

DOWNLOAD BOTH PROGRAMS ARDUINO & PC HERE

http://code.google.com/p/stepperserialcontrol/downloads/list

HOW TO WIRE IT this website has a nice image (and some sample code) showing the utmost basic configuration, the same configuration which was used in this video.

http://danthompsonsblog.blogspot.com/2008/09/easydriver-v31-tutorial.html

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• arduino
• vb
• vb.net
• coding
• battery
• stepper
• motor
• steppermotor
• easy
• easydriver
• driver
• serial
• communication
• serialcommunication
• ascii
• sparkfun
• project
• hobby
• electronics
• future
• insane
• madness
• microstep
• micro
• current
• voltage
• wiring
• breadboard
• computer
• video
• camera

[coder0xff]

Looks like the waveform you have isn't doing the micro steps accurately. Every 8th click of the 1-micro-step movements seems to make a cycle of faster and slower movement - which makes perfect sense given a stepper motor that has 200 native micro steps. Are you using a sine/cosine waveform?

[Halo2maniaccc]

The box is only fit onto the shaft via friction so it does slip at high speeds and causes it to look strange. Check out my other videos where I made a plastic adapter. Now the arduino doesn't use a waveform it uses two 5v ttl logic lines. One either high or low controls direction and the other when pulsed on/off controls the step. The chip on the easy driver uses some waveform to actually drive the motor but I'm not sure you would have to read the datasheet for the chip used on that driver.

[casari4]

ciao,

è normale che se non mando step e dir dall'arduino lui giri comunque???

grazie

[aristidesfl]

it sounds much more silent than in your other videos.. is there a difference on the motor or circuits?

[aristidesfl]

what's the torque of this motor?

would it be capable of opening/closing some roller blinds?

[Halo2maniaccc]

Yea the easy drivers only need 2 I/O pins per motor (one for direction, one for step) unless you want to control power or something else then you need more. So the regular arduino has 13 i/o pins meaning that you could hook up 6 motors or 5 motors (if you want to use serial i/o pin 0 and 1). Its just difficult to control the motors simultaneously. They can be controlled individually with very simple code.

Hope this helps!

[Anima87]

@Halo2maniaccc Thanks for answering.

Can a single arduino control more than one set of stepper motors? - i have a single arduino duemalinove (don't know the spelling). I was thinking of using 2 statements of analogread(x). If one of them reads 12V, one set of motors kick in and if the other reads 12V, another set of motors are running.

[Halo2maniaccc]

Yes it would be very easy there are some super simple tutorials out there showing basic operation just like you would want.

Just make sure to keep these motors at a low rpm because as you go faster they lose torque. If your screen is heavy that could pose a problem.

Keep it as light as possible and you should be good.

[Anima87]

@Halo2maniaccc Would it be easy to program the arduino to rotate "x" times when powered on, and rotate "x" times backwards when it is put into sleep mode? - thinking of doing a DIY projector screen that is motorized. I'm too cheap to pay the price of the commercial stuff.

Can the arduino control more than one stepper motor?