How to get Firmata to control stepper motor on adafruit´s motorshield?

Projects Interfacing w/ Software on the Computer
1

Hello folks,

to give you a bigger picture I would like to control a 12v stepper motor from unity 3D.

What I managed sofar:

  • control the arduino onboard LED via unity / uniduino / firmata
  • control a servo with unity / uniduino / firmata
  • run adafruits stepper test via the stacked motorshield and externally powered 12v stepper motor

What I think I need to do:

  • get firmata "talk" to the motorshield
    unity 3d -> uniduino -> firmata -> motorshield -> stepper motor

There is a script on controlling a stepper motor, but only without the motorshield ( http://bit.ly/17UBjWu from this post http://www.uniduino.com/forums/topic/stepper-motor-code/ )

As of now I don´t know how to get it running with adafruit´s motorshield and hope you gals and guys might have tips or maybe a solution to this.

A great many thanks
Ralf

2

I don't know anything about Firmata or unity3D.

You may find some useful stuff in stepper motor basics and in this simple stepper code

A motor shield is not the best choice for driving a stepper motor. However if you do need to use one then I suggest you use either the Stepper or (better) the AccelStepper library.

...R

3

I know of Firmata and it is not very suitable for driving a stepping motor. It simply turns the Arduino into a dumb I/O board, you loose any real time components to control.

4
  • run adafruits stepper test via the stacked motorshield and externally powered 12v stepper motor

Lets see that code.

While I don't advocate Firmata, either, if the Arduino can toggle the pins appropriately, so can Unity.