Arduino Stepper Control Rig

My stepper motor control configuration. With an ir sensor for indexing stepper position.

details are posted here:
http://blarg.aaronpropst.com/?q=node/12

Category:

News & Politics

Tags:

• Arduino
• electronics

[niceribs]

Which printer ?

[aaronpropst]

@niceribs It's some old dot matrix printer I found in a ditch near my house. Who in their right mind would throw such a goldmine away.. right??

[SCRTpilot]

Why didn't you use the number of steps to reverse direction?

It's a stepper motor after all, you could have used a regular DC motor for this I guess.



[aaronpropst]

@SCRTpilot It's just a proof of concept mr. serious.. and it had the sensor.. so why the hell not play with it? Of course i could have used a DC Motor, but I wouldn't have had to write a bunch of interesting code for that and learn steppers.

I would think the ir sensor was added on there in case the motor gets moved by outside forces (like yanking paper out of the printer) You'd need to index on a starting point to count steps from there. The IR sensor does that with very little effort.

[BackFlash2K]

Cool vid, I wish I could find a stepper with an IR switch.

[aaronpropst]

You can buy an ir switch similar to that at sparkfun. The only difference with mine is it was already slapped together by the people that made the old printer.

[jowan512]

very sorry old chap, was in a sarcastic mood, just electrocuted myself at the mains, anyway i sound like a public school boy which is much worse in my opinion

[Intosia]

Nice :) About to wreck my dotmatrix printer for the stepper :D

[WeAreTwoDoorsDown]

yepp, i think ur right...

[1TwistedmindZ1]

i think you meant phototransistor, that how those optical switches work (1 IR led and 1 IR phototransistor)

[agenttachyon]

Videos like this are extremely useful to beginners and I encourage anybody who has the knowledge and time to make one to do so regardless of how funny their voice sounds.