As one one of my first projects with my new Arduino I thought I would try to hook up a stepper motor. I had a few laying around from old computer hardware I had taken apart and now I finally have the resources to hook them up.
I have a couple of bipolar motors, but I started with this unipolar since it requires fewer components to hook up. since I didn’t have a driver chip I used some 3904 transistors to provide more current to the coils.
Arduino Controlling a Stepper Motor
Each line has an LED to show the sequence of which coils are being activated. There is also a diod on each one to drop the feedback from each coil when it is turned off.
And here’s the video:
I have it running a program that picks a random number of steps and either forward or backwards then moves in that direction. There is a library included with the Arduino software that makes using stepper motors pretty easy once you get them wired up. You can check out more here: http://arduino.cc/en/Reference/Stepper
Update: Here is a better illustration of what’s going on. This is missing the LEDs I added as a visual aid, but it has everything you need to make it work. I’m using 2n3904 NPN transistors and I added some diodes (1n4000 series) to prevent kickback from the motor.
Here is a simple sketch to see if your stepper motor is working: random_stepper2.pde
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[...] a Stepper Motor with an Arduino Part 2 This is an update to my first post about connecting a stepper motor to an Arduino or other [...]
Great tutorial thanks!
I’ve managed to successfully control a stepper motor with the circuit in part one.
The stepper motor I’m currently using is smallish like yours. I have several larger stepper motors and was wondering if it was possible to add a separate power supply and larger transistors to this circuit for the larger stepper motors.
I’ve tried a few things, but I don’t know a whole lot about electronics, so maybe you could point me in the right direction. Just a single word that I can type into a search engine could make all the difference.
Many Thanks!
Gabriel
[...] Posted by Preecha thank,but i control with Arduino AVR .Can i applied that Controlling a Stepper Motor with an Arduino | Azega Reply With Quote + Reply to Thread « Previous Thread | – [...]
a bit off topic, but how did you make the schematic picture? is there some free software to draw out your projects? That would be of great help for me :-)
the schematic picture looks like generated with fritzing. fritzing is open-source –> http://fritzing.org
I am a complete ignorant trying to find his way. I loved your tutorial but I have a big doubt.
I have two stepper motors but they only have 4 wires. Since yours has 5 I don’t know wht to do…
Would someone help me please?
Thanks,
Carlos