No SERIAL Monitor to control Stepper motor ??

Hello Arduino Comunity and thank you for being there...

This is my first time posting to the community.

I am incorporating ARDUINO into the courses that I teach. We will be making dispensers controlled by ARDUNIO and STEPPER MOTORS.

In all of the code examples and tutorials that I find, they seem to all use the SERIAL MONITOR to send instructions to tell the motor how much to turn.

Is it possible to write code that can be downloaded to the ARDUINO that doesn't use the SERIAL MONITOR?

The design intent is: create the program and download to the ARDUINO. Then, press the push button to get the motor turnng (in the amont specified in the program). It would be powered by a battery or power adapter (the dispenser would be sitting sitting on a desk and not have a laptop hooked up to it during regular operation).

I am tinkering with bits of code and understand (somewhat) what is happening in each line of code. I just can't seem to find code that doesn't use the Serial Monitor.

Is the serial monitor necessary?????

Any help/direction would be appreciated.

Thank you. Vince

VinceBenard:
Is it possible to write code that can be downloaded to the ARDUINO that doesn't use the SERIAL MONITOR?

Yes of course.
The Serial Monitor is just used as a convenient way to get user input.

Look at this Simple Stepper Code

...R
Stepper Motor Basics

The serial monitor is not what downloads the code. Its just a window displaying serial I/O to the Arduino.

When you compile & download the IDE runs a program called avrdude to download the code (it has to close
the serial monitor before it can do that).

A program running on an Arduino can talk serial, or just get input from push buttons or whatever.

The serial monitor is very useful for debugging - its often used just for that purpose.