Does anyone knows, how many stepper motors can be controlled (driven) from a single Arduino board ?????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????
I am working on a project where I would need to control about 9 steppers. I know the number of steppers per board is limited, but how many ??????????????
Also can anyone give me an oppinion on this: if one board can only control some steppers, could I use zigbee to get the boards to talk to each other and sync stepper movement ???
Hi,
this is not a black or white question!
The arduino may supply 500mA on the 5V.
and have 14 pins to connect stuff to!
So depending of the size of the motor (how many amps) you may not even put one, you could have, and suggest it, to add interface electronic. like transistor.
Also there is the coil per motor, that is also another issue, if you have 2 or 3 coil per motor , that we take more output per motor.
Don't forget input pins for how the arduino will receive the command to control those motor.
No that's the USB you can only get about 250mA before you fry the regulator on an Arduino. But you can always power the motors from an external supply.
You can expand the number of outputs by using shift registers or latches or multiplexers or I2C I/O expanders so that is not a problem. The main problem is in the software looking after that many. You have two choices:-
Create the pulsing pattern of ON & OFF to the coils in software.
Use a hardware stepping driver to generate the sequence for you in response to a direction and step pulse.