Need help controlling 9 motors, touchscreen and sensors

Projects General Guidance
1

Hi,

So me and my buddy wanna be able to control 9x 5volt stepper motors and read 1x tft touchscreen + 4x sensors.

We were planning on buying the following motors (these motors come with a individual motor driver)

  • DMDG ULN2003 Stepper Motor Driver Module + 5V 28BYJ-48 Stepper Motor for Arduino

Ofcource i need a board with enough pins, so a normal arduino board wont do the job (or will it?) I think I need an arduino mega? Or a normal uno, but then stacked?

Or do i need a arduino mega and an extra motor driver shield or can I just connect the motor drivers that came with the stepper motors that I was planning on buying?

I think my real question is: what aduino boards/drivers/shield do i need if i wanna be able to control 9x 5volt stepper motors and read 1x tft touchscreen + 4x sensors

Hope u can help me out here.

Many thnx ahead

2

Get a proper stepping motor driver one with just a step and direction control pins. Use a port expander to give you more pins.
How much current will your motor take? You need a large external power supply for nine motors.
What are these sensors? Are they on a bus?

3

The 28BYJ-48 unipolar steppers need the ULN2003 driver (or similar) which need a lot of Arduino pins.

A more expensive bipolar stepper could be controlled by specialized stepper drivers such as the Pololu A4988 and then only 2 Arduino pins - step and direction.

Driving unipolar motors also imposes a bigger computation load on the Arduino which may limit the step speed that can be achieved.

Whatever motors you use they will need their own power supply.

If a Mega has enough pins that is the board I would choose. You could possibly use an Uno with external port expander chips but it would be more trouble.

It is always a good idea to describe the project you are attempting in case there is a better way to implement it.

...R
Stepper Motor Basics

4

Hi,
Yes it would be good to have the big picture, what is the application?
What sensors are you using or going to use and how do they communicate?
0-10V, 4-20mA, I2C, RS232 ?

As previously mentioned, the ULN2003 boards are just transistor drivers, you will need to do all the coil switching manipulation in the arduino and use 4 output pins and gnd.
A stepper control board, takes care of the coil switching and current monitoring, you just supply 2 pin outputs and gnd. DIRECTION and STEP or SPEED.

Tom..... :slight_smile:

5

Thank for the answers so far.

It's a secret personal experimental project im working on. Can't tell you what it is exactly. but I can tell you what I want it to do. And when I finished I will reveal it here. It has something to do with food.

But I agree that I should give you guys more information. So you can advice me better about what to purchase to build it with arduino.

So the device am trying to make has a 3,2 inch touchscreen as input. On the screen you will see 3 options. For example: Sweet, Sour and Spicy (for now I'll just assume user chooses "sweet")

When the user selects his taste, another option/question will appear: Small, Medium and Large (for now I'll just explain the medium)

So the 3 different tastes are in 3 different containers (below each container there is a motor), when I choose the taste "sweet", the motor that is attached to the container "sweet" will start to turn.

Below each "taste container" I want to place a container that will cath the "sweet taste" when the motor rotates

On the bottom of those 3 containers I wanna place a load cell from a 5 dollar precision scale (up to 0,01 gram). So a total of 3 load cells are needed.

Ofcource The load cells are connected to the input. So lets say the option "small" represents 0,5 gram, "Medium" will represent 1,5 gram and the option "large" will represent 2,5 gram

So when I have chosen for the option "medium" and "sweet", I want the motor of the "sweet taste" container to start running untill the load cell confirmes that 1,5 gram has been reached. At that point I want the motor to stop.

Now below each container (with load cells on the bottom) there is another motor (so 3 extra motors).

So when the motor reaches 1,5 gram of the "sweet taste" and that motor is instructed to stop, I want the motor that is below the load cell to start turning 180 degrees. This is only needed to throw the 1,5 gram of "sweet taste" that is in the small container into a bigger container.

The bigger container is needed because the "taste" is not the head ingredient. Lets assume that the head ingredient is "flower"

Well each of the end product this device makes has to have a certain volume (taste + flower). So in the "bigger container" I wanna place a sensor that measures the volume. I wanna do this with a simple laser sensor.

So the user selected "sweet" and "medium", so the motor of "sweet" will rotate untill the load cell detects that 1,5 gram has been made. the motor stoppes spinning, the motor below the load cell will turn 180 degrees to the left and back(resulting in the "sweet taste to drop into a bigger container)"

Now the motor of the container that contains the "flower" will spin, below the "flower" there is not a smaller container with a load cell. No, the flower is placed direct above the "bigger container"

so the motor of the flower will spin and will drop the flower on top of the "sweet taste" that lies in the "bigger container", the laser will indicate if a certain volume (always the same) has been reached. When the volume is reached the motor of the "flower" should stop spinning.

Now we got a "bigger container" that is filled with flower and "sweet taste"
Below the "bigger container" there are 3 motors that will be activated as soon as the "flower motor" has stopped.

1 motor will just rotate the container, 1 motor will (autumn/fall) the container. You can compare this to a small spinning concread mill that is slowly being poored.

The now mixed flower and sweet taste will fall into a funnel into a form.

To make sure nothing sticks to the funnel I want to make it vibrate. So this is where I need that 3rd motor that also has to be avtivated as soon as the "flower motor" has stopped.

So to answer ur questions:

-3 load cells
-1 laser sensor
-1 3,2 inch touchscreen
-9 stepping motors

Hope you have a better idea about the "bigger picture" or did I just made things more complicated?

6

I can't see anything in your description that suggests the need for stepper motors. If you want motors that run until they are switched off any simple DC motor would do. If you want to move something 180 deg a hobby servo would probably be suitable - or a DC motor and a limit switch.

I suspect you mean "flour" and not "flower"

...R

7

So to answer ur questions:

-3 load cells
-1 laser sensor
-1 3,2 inch touchscreen
-9 stepping motors

So have you gotten any of the above devices working individually with an arduino? If not, then that might be where you need to start.