So I'm looking to de-power a stepper motor controller with an Adafruit DRV8833 driver. My reason for this is that I want the motor controller to be able to freespin. I know the point of a stepper is for precise control and to freespin seems to defeat the purpose, but I have a reason. Given that the Stepper library doesn't seem to have any kind of release method, I've thought of 2 ways to depower the motor:
Manually overwrite the pins by digitalWriting them all low. I'm not sure if this would de-power the motor, so if someone could tell me if that would de-power it, that'd be great.
Wire a TIP122 NPN transistor into the circuit and physically cut off the power when needed. Only problem is I'm not sure where this would go in the circuit, and I'd rather not have one for every motor coil.
Could anyone tell me if there's an easy way to do this? (Maybe the DRV8833 has a disable pin?), or maybe there's another stepper library that has a release function?
Most steppers these days require a current-control drive, and won't work properly with the
DRV8833 or other H-bridges. Steppers will always be very slow when driven from an H-bridge
anyhow.
When asking a technical question please post details of all the hardware and your code.
Details of hardware means full details, such as link to datasheet or product page - the phrase "stepper motor"
is of no use since there are dozens of size and several types, and details always matter.