hi everyone!
Is it possible with arduino to run a stepper motor and an ethernet shield on the same time? I dont know anything about the pins beeing used by the ethernet shield, and those beeing used by the stepper motor..
I am asking, because I have to control a stepper motor over the web.
Looking forward to hear from you!
Sheers..
I don't know much about the ethernet shield either, but I do know that all seem to take up quite a few pins on the Arduino, which is understandable. You will probably have enough pins left over to control a single stepper motor, but if you want to go beyond one motor, or incorporate other functionality, things become limited quickly.
You might then look into some kind of SPI/I2C stepper motor controller (as well as other SPI/I2C bus interfacing controllers for adding I/O, ADC, etc). Another option would be to use a second Arduino (in standalone operation), and communicate with that using SPI/I2C.
A better option might be to ditch the ethernet shield, and go with an XPORT (or similar) interface:
You could communicate with it using a software serial library (or the regular hardware serial port, which might work better, if you didn't need it for anything else). An XPORT might provide a much better way of adding ethernet connectivity to the Arduino, without sacrificing as many pins. It might not be as fast of an interface, though (not sure), but then again the XPORT handles much more of the interfacing details, so the resulting library would likely be simpler (if needed at all).
Looks like LadyAda has such a beast, actually:
I can't speak to stepper motors, but I know I can operate two servos via the ethernet shield. You might compare the stepper pins used to the servo pins used and see how they compare.
thanks so much for the replies, I guess I`ll try it out than ...
take it easy and have a nice day...
If you use a motor driver shield, it only requires power, ground, and 2 digital pins - one for direction and one for stepping.
EasyDriver - Stepper Motor Driver - ROB-12779 - SparkFun Electronics is one example.
It matters not what pins you use to drive stepping motors where as it does matter about the pins for the Ethernet shield. So you should be able to use some unused pins to drive it.
It all depends on what sort of motor you have bi-polar or unipolar.
I have to run a bi-polar motor with the board. I dont understand, why it matters?
Tanks for the replies!