Stepper motor control: which software to program???

Thread Starter

matomato

Joined Jun 3, 2011
1
Hi everyone,

I am new in this forum and also new about stepper motors.

I have bought a microstepping driver SD-2H086MB, a driver board X220826 and a stepper motor 85BYGH450-012B for some simple applications.

I have also the datasheet with the pulse setting and sequence to move the motor. What I want to do is to control the motor via parallel port of the PC.

I would like to know what kind of software or program, possible easy, can be used to program this control and maybe some link where to learn about theis task.
Thanks for the reply
matomato
 

beenthere

Joined Apr 20, 2004
15,819
We can hardly make any recommendation without knowing your OS. Are you sure you want to use the parallel port? They are mostly not present any longer.
 

shortbus

Joined Sep 30, 2009
10,045
You don't have to program anything to make it step the motor. You need to give a square wave pulse to the pulse in connector. The higher the frequency the faster the motor will turn. This can be from a 555 astable circuit or the computer. The step sequence is built into the driver unit.

The direction is controlled by putting a high (5v) or low(0V) on the direction pin. This can be done with a simple SPDT switch.

The size of the steps is selected by switches built into the unit.

Here is a link to the manual for the driver; http://www.yk-tec.com/driver%20catalogue/SD-2H086MB.pdf
 

SgtWookie

Joined Jul 17, 2007
22,230
Well, he wants to use the parallel port on the computer.

Unless our OP has something like a really old computer box, or a PC104 industrial computer running some form of DOS or UNIX, they'll have a rather choppy time of it. Windows from 2000 on doesn't like to give up control of system resources, like the printer port - one has to resort to devious means. Trying to use those USB to printer port adapters just doesn't work well.

More info on PC104:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PC/104
http://www.pc104.org
There's a whole slew of offshoot specifications from the original PC104 spec. It's different, because you stack add-on cards vertically like a skyscraper.
There are a number of other "flavors"; many of them described on the pc104.org site. Many of the PC104 boards are pretty inexpensive.
 

shortbus

Joined Sep 30, 2009
10,045
There are still computers being made with parallel ports, the home CNC market uses them. They don't have all the bells and whistles that are popular with the average user but you can still buy one. :)
 
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