Controlling stepper motors via serial monitor - AccelStepper library

Projects Programming
3

Cheers for the reply Robin2, I had managed to get the example working before I started trying to make adjustments.

Took out the strings and have made the checks just look for single character commands, also have tried implementing string compares, but I think I may be screwing up the syntax of them a little bit. I haven't done a lot of work with sending data via serial monitor before, but will read the sites and threads you sent over, thanks for that.

#include <AccelStepper.h>

AccelStepper stepper1(AccelStepper::FULL4WIRE, 5, 6, 7, 8);
AccelStepper stepper2(AccelStepper::FULL4WIRE, 9, 10, 11, 12);

void setup()
{  
    Serial.begin(9600);
    
    stepper1.setMaxSpeed(200.0);
    stepper1.setAcceleration(100.0);
    stepper1.moveTo(360);
    
    stepper2.setMaxSpeed(200.0);
    stepper2.setAcceleration(100.0);
    stepper2.moveTo(360);
}
   
    char inBuffer = "";

void loop()
{
    while (Serial.available())
    {
      inBuffer = Serial.read();
    }
    
    //byte incomingByte = Serial.read();
       
    if (strcmp(inBuffer,"a")==0)
    {
      Serial.println("test point 1");
      //if (stepper1.distanceToGo() == 0)
      stepper1.moveTo(-stepper1.currentPosition());
      stepper1.run();
    }
    
    else if (strcmp(inBuffer,"b")==0)
    {
       Serial.println("test point 2");      
       //if (stepper2.distanceToGo() == 0)
       stepper2.moveTo(-stepper2.currentPosition());
       stepper2.run();
    }
    
    //inBuffer = "";
}

Is this the correct way of doing the strcmp or does it need to be done this way?

result = strcmp(example1, example2);

    if (result == 0)

For the moment, I just want to get to the point where sending "a" makes stepper one move, and sending "b", makes stepper two move. Although, in the future I will need to be able to send the number of steps so will give example 3 a look.

Thanks for the help!