I was referencing the way the code is written. I think the TB6612 takes a PWM input signal from the arduino instead of the direction+step code. Maybe I'm not clear about that detail (and maybe its effectively the same) or you can change the code to make it work, but in general terms I was looking to reduce the # of input wires because of my limitations, but yeah, this motor is one of those 8mm ones that's happiest running at no more than 5v. I'm still in a learning/testing phase for this project and I might be switching to a raspberry pi pico soon, but arduino nano is the MC I'm most familiar with so I started there.
oh! THAT's what the ?? were about. Now I get it. Sorry!
The motor is an 8mm two-phase four wire stepper motor with a phase resistance of 22 ohms. The nominal voltage of the motor is DC5V and the rated current is 150mA.
So set the A4988 current to 150ma and you can use 8V or even 12V
Ok, I'll give that a shot- although in the future I'd like to get to using a battery and with this plan I'll need to use a voltage booster module to get there, not a deal breaker but I keep it simple when I can.