Hello, engineers and hobbyists!
I've got that old cd-rom from a dusty shelf and after disassembling it, found a stepper motor with 4 wires out and a long fused stick. That one moves the lens block up and down the drive to read circles out of disks.
All I'm trying to do right now is to make it work with arduino Stepper library and... I kinda... can't do sh... anything but make it sound like 'click-click-click'... No matter which number of steps or speed limit I set, it just doesn't seem to work.
Tell me please, do I have to give it more power (how? will I burn my ardy), or is it just something wrong with the settings? Do I have to attach some sort of a second controller either?
Please, help me, I kinda feel it's gonna be something really big and strong like... terminator?
2Grumpy_Mike
Thanks for the advice, but I probably think that the connection is right in my case, I may not know exactly in which direction my stepper should turn, but in any other pin connection layout my motor doesn't even 'click-click-click', so I'm sure I'm on the right way, now I just have to find a way to finally MOVE it, not just send some useless signals. =\
2mircho
I was afraid that I'll need something like that one.
The problem is, I have arduino nano, and I can't use shields.
Thanks for the links, I've seen 'em before and still can't understand why I can't control this stepper with nude arduino... I mean, arduino can send almost any signal at any time and I can program that with C#, so I just can't understand what exactly I'm lacking here.
Plus I'm planning to drive 2 stepper motors at the same time for 2 dimensions, and I think I'll need at least 2 more important parts (chips?) to drive it.
Thanks for the info anyway, Mircho!
Almost.
I'm trying to make X and Y dimension moving platform out of 2 steppers I took from dvd-drives.
Maybe I'll teach it to draw things with pen, etc. I've just started and need some help, you know... it's not an easy thing to do with my skills :-[ :-X
Still, what hbridge is? Why can't I just control it with arduino? Can I buy some spare parts and solder/screw it together just to play around for some simple tests? Will I make a terminator few months later while reading this forum?
Some of the head-moving steppers in CD/DVD drives are pretty dependent on the "extended" mechanics. I've seen setups where there's a ball bearing at the end of the screw drive, and without that and the in-between frame of the drive, the shaft gets unaligned and would be unlikely to turn.
I didn't use a shield. I just implemented what was in this page: http://www.tigoe.net/pcomp/code/category/arduinowiring/51
(the "two-wire" circuit) on a perfboard and after some adjustments it worked. This was my first serious attempt at adding more electronics to the arduino. The reason for the h-bridge is that it can handle the current needed by the motor, while the arduino cannot. In my tests, while feeding the motor with 9 volts, the h-bridge was getting pretty hot! The aruino might have just died (or partially died).
Thank you, mircho!
That's exactly what I've been looking for, I kinda felt I'll need something like this to give enough power for my babies and not to burn my supapupaduino!
Thanks to everybody who replied - I'll use this thread as a reference for my upcoming project.
