Linear Actuator Programming Help

Using Arduino Motors, Mechanics, Power and CNC
#1

I am currently trying to program an arduino uno with a stepper driver board L298N for a class project. The motor i am using is a Nema 17. I have very little programming experience and am having a hard time getting started on this.

The project is to use a pixy cam that detects motion of a ping pong ball and its location and move a paddle to block the ball from rolling off of the table. Like a air hockey table but only one axis. The pixy cam is located behind the paddle so i can track the paddle along with the ball.

Does anyone have any suggestions or pointers to get started in the right direction? or even a code that could be modified to work with this setup?

Thanks for help

#2

The motor i am using is a Nema 17.

The NEMA 17 spec defines the mounting hole locations. Not particularly useful information for understanding your problem. Telling us what color it is would be about as useful.

I have very little programming experience

Isn't that the purpose of the class?

Does anyone have any suggestions or pointers to get started in the right direction?

Sure. Forget about the pixy cam or any other source of data for the moment.

Write some code to make the stepper step 100 times in one direction, then stop for 5 seconds, step 100 times in the opposite direction, then stop for 5 seconds. loop() will make sure that that happens over and over.

When you can make the stepper move at all, figure out how to know when the stepper needs to stop, because it's banging whatever its moving against one of the two limit switches.

When you can make the stepper move the whatever end to end, then you can consider using the data from the pixy cam, in whatever form that will be, to position the whatever to block the ball.

#3

My suggestion is to heed what PaulS says.... much as I hate cliches, this is a case of eating this elephant a bite at a time.

Not to say you can't do some of the work in parallel: I think the research on the pixy cam whatever that is, will be significant so you could try to get the ball rolling on that while you get the motor working.

Is the use of the 298 cast in stone? That'sa really crap driver for a stepper, very outdated. Read what Robin2 has to say about stepper basics here.

#4