My engineering team is trying to build a device that will possibly be incorporating four stepper motors (two on the chassis and the other two on the arm). Our first thought was to go with arduino uno, but one problem is that a uno only usually connect to two motor driver boards (we're using big easy driver). Then I was wondering which one would a better idea:
a) using two uno boards
b) using a uno and a nano
c) using a mega borad
If going with a or b would that mean I need to use some sort of sensor to send feedback to the micro controller so that the stepper motors start running? Well I was kinda hoping that the stepper motors will drive the device to go an exact distance and i might not be using any sensor.
An Uno would have no difficulty controlling 4 steppers as each driver only needs a step and direction connection. If you want to option of changing the level of microstepping with the Arduino and need more I/O pins then a Mega would be a good idea.
Using 2 Arduinos will introduce all the complexity of communicating between them. And it would be difficult to synchronize motor steps across the join.
You have not mentioned what other equipment you will need and the Mega has the advantage of having 3 spare HardwareSerial ports.
I don't understand what you have in mind for the role of the sensor or why you think option C would not need one.
Even with stepper motors there is likely to be some slippage between the wheel and the surface so some form of external position detection may be needed.
That cleared up a lot of confusion for me, so appreciated!
I had some misunderstanding with stepper motors, mainly because I forgot to take into account that there would slippage, so thanks for bring it up! I'll definitely be looking into some sensors to deal with the issue.
Communication between two arduino boards does seem very complex for me right now. I think I'll go with Mega
