How to switch off L298N driver for a stepper motor

Other Hardware Motors, Mechanics, Power and CNC
1

Dear Arduino folks,

So far I followed the Demo#3 in this guide

Everything works like a charm, all wiring is fine... but the L298N gets very hot. As far as I read, this is a very common issue and, after some research, I've realized that the L298N is probably not the best driver to control a NEMA-17 stepper motor (leason learned, never again).

Nonetheless, I feel like the driver has still a chance in my implementation. Why? Well, I just need to position the stepper motor somewhere and no external forces are applied on it, hence, I don't really care if it's powered off after reaching the desired position (0 torque is fine to me).

Then I started to investigate the enable ports.

I currently have the enable ports connected to 5V. Whenever I start an Arduino sketch, the board stays "off", and no overheating is noticed, once I execute a command and move the stepper motor, it looks like the board logic starts to run permanently (and so it starts heating up, even without moving the motor anymore).

Would it be possible to switch off the board via the enable ports? This way I would avoid the overheating! Or as a newbie I'm missing something important? A programatic way to solve this would be fantastic.

Thanks a lot and have a very nice week.

2

Would it be possible to switch off the board via the enable ports?

Yes, as the pin name suggests, that is what they are for. See the L298 data sheet.

Pololu has the best selection of modern, high efficiency motor drivers.

3

Good, last question then.

I just tried to switch on and off the board logic switching pin3 from HIGH to LOW (digitalmode output).

Sadly, that has no effect, and I assume that's because the LOW level on pin3 it's a low voltage logic level and not a true ground.

If I wildly connect the enable ports to the true ground I observe the expected behavior.

How could I reproduce that behavior programatically? i.e. switching pin3 from 5v to true ground? I'm open to other suggestions :slight_smile:

Thanks a lot, happy tuesday,

4

For informed help, please read and follow the directions in the "How to use this forum" post.

5

LOW is ground, unless you are switching more than 40mA.