dzzyd88:
im harvesting parts from everything old laptop to printers shit like that but for the laptop i was wondering if anyone knows how to make a ethen et hook up for the arduino without buying a ethenet shield so practicly wanting to build my own, or how about the wifi card in a laptop can it hook up with some tweeks?
You could get a network module either completely built up, or as a bare circuit. There are many on eBay. The ENC28J60 Ethernet LAN Modules are very cheap but not so well supported by the Arduino IDE (they're not supported directly by the standard IDE 1.0 libraries so you have to either find and download one and use an older IDE version, or write your own if you're going to go for one of those. Alternatively look for a module with the supported chipset. In the end though not sure you'll save a heap over getting a shield, but you do get the flexibility of choosing your own pins to a larger extent.
Back to the topic at hand, I understand from one of the original posters that grabbing the stepper controllers that match to the steppers will be a good idea, but in a situation where you have multiple steppers that are unmarked and of different sizes, can you point me to a way of working out what the spec is of a component you've harvested (stepper, DC motors for example) where there is no component marking on them? I've recently pulled down a few Canon and Epson printers, internally they have a mix of voltages being supplied aside from 12v and 5v (one Epson stepper that has a marking says it's 14v and the supply inside one Pixma puts out 24v and 32v for example).
Short question is can you determine without fear of destroying it what spec a motor or stepper is that has no markings? Also is there a standard order for the pins/ribbons coming out of a stepper?
Thanks