Stepper Motor delay problem - am I crazy?

Other Hardware Motors, Mechanics, Power and CNC
1

I'm working with a bipolar stepper motor (zjchao668), and a L298N Motor Drive Controller Board with an Uno. I think I'm missing something obvious? The problem is that the motor stops working if I call delay() in the sketch. For example, the first chunk of code below works completely fine. The motor makes one full clockwise revolution, then immediately does a full counterclockwise rotation back to where it started. Note that the delay between revolutions is commented out:

#include <Stepper.h>

const int stepsPerRevolution = 200;  
 Stepper myStepper(stepsPerRevolution,8,9,10,11);

void setup() {
  myStepper.setSpeed(100);
  Serial.begin(9600);
}

void loop() {
  // step one revolution  in one direction:
  Serial.println("clockwise");
  myStepper.step(stepsPerRevolution);
  //delay(500);

  // step one revolution in the other direction:
  Serial.println("counterclockwise");
  myStepper.step(-stepsPerRevolution);
  
  while(1);
}

HOWEVER the exact same code, with the delay between revolutions, does not work. When I run this, the motor makes one revolution clockwise, and then just stops. It never does the counterclockwise revolution, although the sketch does print "counterclockwise" to serial. Am I missing something? In all the tutorials I can find, there doesn't seem to be any problem using delay, but for some reason that seems to break for me.

#include <Stepper.h>

const int stepsPerRevolution = 200;  
 Stepper myStepper(stepsPerRevolution,8,9,10,11);

void setup() {
  myStepper.setSpeed(100);
  Serial.begin(9600);
}

void loop() {
  // step one revolution  in one direction:
  Serial.println("clockwise");
  myStepper.step(stepsPerRevolution);
  delay(500);

  // step one revolution in the other direction:
  Serial.println("counterclockwise");
  myStepper.step(-stepsPerRevolution);
  
  while(1);
}
2

That does seem very strange.

Have you tried using different lengths of delay() ?

I would also try putting the delay() after the print statement (just to see what happens) .

...R
Stepper Motor Basics

3

I've tried different lengths of delay(); both very short and up to about 10 seconds, with no change. Moving the print statement also produced no change. (I tried removing the print, also with no change.) I also tried swapping out the motor, swapping out the driver, with the same models, and no change.