I am trying to control 16 stepper motors, one at a time. They only need to go in one direction (all the same). I would like to use the least amount of pins possible, so I was considering ways of multiplexing them.
The one method would involve 16 drivers (one for each motor). Except for the step input, all other inputs would be the same to each driver (only using 3 pins if using the A4988 driver). The step input would be multiplexed to each driver. How should I go about implementing this?
See "How to use this forum" for hints on successful posting.
ddodge:
I am trying to control 16 stepper motors, one at a time. They only need to go in one direction (all the same). I would like to use the least amount of pins possible, so I was considering ways of multiplexing them.The one method would involve 16 drivers (one for each motor). Except for the step input, all other inputs would be the same to each driver (only using 3 pins if using the A4988 driver). The step input would be multiplexed to each driver. How should I go about implementing this?
4 to 16-way decoder chip 74HC4514 will take a 4-bit code and turn one of its 16 outputs high with enabled. Use
4 pins to control which channel, and toggle the enable pin to generate a step pulse?
If that's hard to source a 16-way analog multiplexer can be used to route a step pulse, so long as pull-down resistors are used on each stepper driver step pin.