Stepper Motor Control?

Well today my friend decided to give his old printer to me (Yay!). So when I got home I took my screw drivers, and my handy dandy Needle Nose and got to work opening it. Once I extracted the casing I saw one normal gear motor (which I now think has a capacitor in it), and the famous Stepper Motor . A few minutes later I had extracted the motor, the stepper motor and gears. Now on to the point... Could you drive a stepper motor with 4 PWN ports in sync? I looked up my motor controller shield (Which I still don't know how to program...) and saw it didn't take stepper motors . Do I need to make something called an H-Bridge. How do you get this thing working? Sorry for all the questions (and possibly the story ), -Cwbh

Now on to the point... Could you drive a stepper motor with 4 PWN ports in sync? I looked up my motor controller shield (Which I still don't know how to program...) and saw it didn't take stepper motors . Do I need to make something called an H-Bridge. How do you get this thing working?

Hello CwbhX,

First: I'm not a expert on the subject.

I think you need a H-Bridge. Think you could destroy your netduino if you connect the pins directly to it.

There are two kinds of stepper motor's Bi-polar and uni-polar, and from what I've read, it appears that if you have 4 pins it's a Bi-polar stepper motor so take a look at: http://bansky.net/bl...icro-framework/

Pavel Bánský has some info and code for using a bi-polar stepper motor.

Thanks a lot Mats! I guess I will have to work on modifying the code to fit Netduino. I hope I don't need the double bridge, but I will build it if necessary. Have a good day! -Cwbh

I've added a step genie to my Christmas list: http://www.stepgenie.com/

I've added a step genie to my Christmas list:

http://www.stepgenie.com/

ME Too! I will order one today

Do I have to get the demo board? or can I hook it up to the Netduino with some jumpers on a breadboad?

-Cwbh

P.S. I am getting of my topic :/ Must get back to Project 2 soon.

The demo board is for a parallel port, I would go with the step genie and four of the mosfet things they recommend, assuming you have that type of stepper motor.. I've never driven a stepper so this is all guessing on my part.

Will do! I will let you know how it goes when it comes .

ME Too! I will order one today

Do I have to get the demo board? or can I hook it up to the Netduino with some jumpers on a breadboad?

-Cwbh

P.S. I am getting of my topic :/ Must get back to Project 2 soon.

I've got a StepGenie Demo board and would suggest that you go that way instead of a chip and MOSFETs on a breadboard. Yes, the demo board has a parallel port connector, and it comes with a PC program to test your stepper. However, it also has the step, direction, and enable* connections brought out for connection to something else. On top of that, it has good solid connectors and thick traces designed for the high currents that steppers can demand.

For my testing, I first got the stepper wired and working on my PC, using a breadboard only to produce the correct voltages to feed the stepper (3.3V in my case) and the Demo board (5V). That worked.

Next I soldered a 4 pin header into the spot provided on the Demo board. Then I hooked my controller (Wright Hobbies DevBoard-M32) to the StepGenie with 4 jumpers and started to program away. I am getting THAT to work today, I hope.

The Demo board costs a couple of bucks more but is worth it to me to break my problem (and solution) into steps to be taken one at a time. Maybe, when I'm really familiar with steppers, I'll do it differently but I always feel that when you don't know what you are doing, you should deal with someone who does.