I just started on Arduino with my first one yesterday. I have a NEMA 23 stepper motor a stepper controller (HY-DIV268N-5A) and a Arduino UNO R3 clone. I have the motor running and can reverse it and all that using two pins, 8 and 10. I am using a script or whatever the official name is and it calls on the stepper.h from the library. What I am wondering is what signals are supposed to be sent on the pins referenced by myStepper(stepsPerRevolution, 8, 9, 10, 11). Which ones are pulses and which ones are enable and which ones are whatever? I cannot find anything that says what parameters are passed by this function or any other for that matter. Maybe I am just thick and have not looked hard enough or not understood the function. Still if some kind soul would elaborate on what the heck the parameters are passing it would be very helpful to me. I have found another library that seems better suited to what I am doing called Accelstepper but I would still like to know the answer to the stepper.h question. I also wonder if their is some way to increase the text size in the code editor? I am 70 and it is a bit small for me. I apologize if these questions are in the wrong forum or asked the wrong way.
Welcome....
I can't help with the stepper questions, but you can change the font size in File > Preferences
Thanks for the font information. That will make life a lot better.
Post a link to the datasheet for your stepper driver - and for your stepper motor.
You may find some useful stuff in stepper motor basics.
If your driver just needs step and direction signals I presume you just need to specify the two pins - but the reference material is not clear.
The AccelStepper library has a lot more functionality.
But if you don't need acceleration it may be just as simple not to use any library and use the sort of code in this simple stepper program.
...R
Definitely use AccelStepper for a step+direction driver, I don't think Stepper.h handles these
at all (it didn't used to, maybe its been changed though).
You need to ramp speed up for a high performance motor or you won't get high
performance from it. Each motor+its load will have a maximum acceleration and
a maximum speed that it will tolerate without mis-stepping. AccelStepper lets you
program in these limits directly.
Check if the driver needs its enable input active too (its frustrating if it does and you
cant understand why nothing ever happens!).
Here is the place I got specs for this motor;
And here where I got what I have on the motor control;
http://hobbycncaustralia.com/Instructions/iI72DIV268NToStepper.htm
It is great that I am getting all of this help and I do appreciate it. But we seem to have drifted far away from my question about the stepper.h library.
What I am wondering is what signals are supposed to be sent on the pins referenced by myStepper(stepsPerRevolution, 8, 9, 10, 11). I cannot find anything that says what parameters are passed by this function or any other in that library for that matter.
By the way I have been tinkering with the motor, driver, arduino all afternoon and I now have it doing what I want. I have a two position switch (on, off, on) that I am using to start the motor turning in the direction I want as long as I hold the switch on. I will tinker with the acceleration some now and that should do today job. Thanks everyone.
hswaters:
But we seem to have drifted far away from my question about the stepper.h library.
Yes.
The consensus seems to be to use the AccelStepper library
if you need a library at all.
...R