Basic Function for Stepper Motor for Beginner

Thread Starter

kavinuma

Joined Dec 1, 2013
1
Hi,

I am a beginner n00bzorz with circuits, and for this project I'm working on, it was recommended that I use a stepper motor for its precise rotation. So I bought a stepper motor, but I have absolutely no idea how to use it. It's a 4 phase 5 wire lead stepper motor, which looks a lot like this:

http://www.geeetech.com/wiki/index....ase_5-Wire_&_ULN2003_Driver_Board_for_Arduino

I don't know how to hook it up, and I don't know how to operate it at all. Our project was originally complex, but we have dumbed it down considerably. We are using an electrical signal from the eye (EOG http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrooculography) to control a prosthetic eye to rotate synchronously. We are only working with left and right movements and it's pretty much three positions for the eye: left, right, and middle. So what I need to do is use the right movement output to rotate the stepper motor let's say 70 degrees and the left 70 degrees the other way. But again, I have no idea what I am doing. If anyone can help, I would greatly appreciate it.

- kavinuma
 

MaxHeadRoom

Joined Jul 18, 2013
28,619
The L297 is a popular small stepper controller, if you Google it you will get all the circuits you want, you could set up a basic counter output to step the required number of steps.
Max.
 

THE_RB

Joined Feb 11, 2008
5,438
Ebay has tiny unipolar (5-wire) driver PCBs, I have seen them as cheap as $5. They accept step/dir inputs so you need to drive it with X number of steps in the right direction to turn the motor 70 degrees.

The easiest way to generate the steps is with a small microcontroller. :)
 
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