Hello everyone, I'm looking to connect several components to my Arduino board and could use some advice. Specifically, I want to connect three Nema 17 stepper motors, three linear actuators 12V, 300N, one vibration motor, and one display.

I'm wondering if anyone can offer guidance on what materials and components I'll need to make these connections. Additionally, any tips on how to connect them would be greatly appreciated. Thank you in advance for your help!

 

Welcome to AAC.

Unfortunately, I don't have time today to be more detailed, but here is a start on what you need to know.

The stepper motors should be connected to an appropriate stepper driver. This will allow the program running on the MCU to simply command the driver rather than having to handle power, microstepping, and the like. The connection will be according to its interface: SPI, I²C, or serial. Appropriate drivers abound, search for something that matches the number of steppers and their current requirement.

The actuators can also be driven by purpose made motor drivers. Again, you should look for something that can handle the appropriate current. These are generally quite cheap.

The vibration motor is probably best controlled by a logic level MOSFET on an Arduino GPIO pin. The display—like the stepper controller—will be connected according to its interface. This will depend on the display selection.

 

Probably the most popular stepper motor driver is the L298 module shown below. Software drivers for the Aduino are available in the stepper motor libraries.

 

A better way to think about this is from a more wholistic perspective, it's not wise to just "connect things up" without a big picture understanding of how the components are going to work together.
The details matter, in terms of cost, complexity and how you write the code.

Maybe you can provide more details about what this thing is going to do?

 

Probably the most popular stepper motor driver is the L298 module shown below. Software drivers for the Aduino are available in the stepper motor libraries.

The only thing is that is just the driver, not a controller that is important to control steppers with the manuf. required constant operating current.

 

Trigger: the metal sensor.

After triggering:
Step 1: after triggering, the "linear actuator 1" starts and lowers the cylinder at a certain level. At the same time, the "stepper motor 1" is started at a certain speed and with certain forward and backward movements at the indicated intervals. At the end of that process, the "linear actuator 1" returns to the initial position, and the "stepper motor 1" stops.

Step 2: "Stepper motor 2" makes a step of ~+90 degrees. The "vibrating motor" starts for 3 seconds.

Step 3: the "linear actuator 2" is activated and lowers the cylinder at a certain level. At the same time, the "stepper motor 3" is started. After 3 seconds this stepper motor is switched off, the "linear actuator 2" returns to the initial position.

Step 4: "Stepper Motor 2" makes an additional ~+90 degree step.

Step 5: the "Linear Actuator 3" is started and lowers the cylinder to a certain level and returns to the initial level. It is necessary to make an option so that the user can choose on the LCD screen how many times the cylinder will be lowered (1, 2 or 3).

Step 6: "Stepper Motor 1" returns ~-180 degrees.



Required options that the user can select on the screen:
- Ability to turn on and off the vibrating motor
- Possibility to choose whether you want all steps or only some of these steps to be done by the machine.
- Possibility at "step 5" to choose whether to lower the cylinder 1, 2 or 3 times
- and few more option.