Stepper Motors

Stepper motors generally come in two types, Unipolar with 5 or 6 wires, and Bipolar with 4 wires.

There are now code libraries available to automate the task of controlling a stepper motor (below). If you're interested in seeing how a stepper motor works and controlling it from first principles, read on!

• The Stepper Motor Module allows direct connection to a stepper motor via a simple motor driver IC (eg. one wire per motor coil is connected from Espruino into the driver). This works on any Espruino device.
• The NRF52 Stepper Motor Module is designed for connecting nRF52-based Espruino devices to a specialist stepper motor driver IC. It uses the nRF52 peripherals to provide glitchless stepper motor control independent of CPU usage.

Wiring Up

You can't drive stepper motors (whatever the type) directly from Espruino - you'll need to use some kind of motor driver to provide enough power. Which driver you use depends on which type of stepper motor you have...

4 wire (BiPolar)

These motors require you to be able to connect each wire to positive voltage or ground independently. Because of this you need a H Bridge motor driver with 4 outputs, like the L293D. Something that can only pull down to ground (like the ULN2003) won't be good enough.

We're assuming the following connections:

5/6 wire (Unipolar)

You connect the common wire(s) of these motors to a positive voltage and then move them by connecting the other wires to ground in the correct pattern. Because of this, you can use almost any drive chip as long as it has enough outputs. The ULN2003 is a good example, but you can also use the L293D (however you won't be using its pull-up functionality).

We're assuming the following connections:

4 Step Control

Once wired up, controlling stepper motors should be very similar no matter which type they are:

var step = 0;
var steps = [0b0001,0b0010,0b0100,0b1000];
var stepperPins = [A3,A2,B10,B11]; // Change these to pins for your motor driver

function doStep() {
 step++;
 digitalWrite(stepperPins, steps[step % steps.length]);
}
var stepInterval = setInterval(doStep, 200);

When you run this, you may notice that the stepper motor you have does not step around in the same direction for each step. This is just because the wires aren't connected in the right order. Try swapping the 4 pins in the stepperPins array around to see if different combinations work.

8 Step Control

Just copy the code from above, and while it's running, type:

var steps = [0b0001,0b0011,0b0010,0b0110,0b0100,0b1100,0b1000,0b1001];

Change the Speed

This is really easy, just call changeInterval to update the speed at which setInterval works:

changeInterval(stepInterval, 100);

Microstepping

You can even use the PWM analog outputs to microstep!

function doStep() {
  step+=0.1;
  analogWrite(stepperPins[0], Math.sin(step));
  analogWrite(stepperPins[1], Math.sin(step + Math.PI*0.5));
  analogWrite(stepperPins[2], Math.sin(step + Math.PI));
  analogWrite(stepperPins[3], Math.sin(step + Math.PI*1.5));
}

Stepping to an exact location

The code below will step to an exact location, with dynamic speed control! Just set targetStep to the integer step number you require!

var step = 0;
var targetStep = 0;
var steps = [0b0001,0b0011,0b0010,0b0110,0b0100,0b1100,0b1000,0b1001];
var stepperPins = [D9,D11,D14,D12];
var stepInterval = setInterval(doStep, 100);
var doStep = function () {
 var d = step - targetStep;
 if (d < 0)
   step++;
 else if (d > 0)
   step--;
 if (d==0) { // we're there - sleep
   changeInterval(stepInterval, 500);
   digitalWrite(stepperPins, 0);
 } else {
   var time = 100 - Math.abs(d)*4;
   if (time<10) time=10;
   changeInterval(stepInterval, time);
   digitalWrite(stepperPins, steps[step%steps.length]);
 }
};

Using

(No tutorials are available yet)

Buying

You can get all kinds of stepper motors and drivers, however the small 5V geared stepper motors on eBay are amazingly cheap, and very easy to wire up to Espruino.