I am a beginner with Arduino and everything is still confusing. I need to complete a project wherein I'll use 3 units of 5V 28BYJ-48 stepper motors as well as a TFT LCD touch display screen. I'm also using an Arduino Mega for this one. What power supply is preferable to be used? What I have found available was a 12V 5A power supply unit like this:
Are any of these 2 okay to be used for my project? If not, what would you recommend for me to purchase? Please be very specific as I am still a little lost about Arduino. Any suggestions and warnings are greatly appreciated. Thanks
A 12V supply, when your motors are 5V devices? I'd suggest this is a poor starting point.
However, to advise on power requirements, we need to know more details about your hardware. Have you chosen a stepper driver circuit? The Arduino cannot drive your stepper phases directly, you need an interface circuit.
Power - So, you'll want something similar, but with 5V output.
Yes, the driver board was what I was driving at...
Others who have worked with this driver and motor should comment, but here's a start:
The motor coil resistance is 42 ohms; from that, I'd deduce that one coil will draw ~100 mA. Two coils per motor, three motors, means 600 mA, presuming they could all be on simultaneously. Now, those are static, DC numbers; I'd probably double them and add a safety margin, so you probably can use a 2A supply for the motors. You also want to power your TFT, and your Arduino itself, so I'd add an ampere(conservative) for that; some might suggest you simply use the Arduino power for that part of the project.
Therefore, a 2A or 3A supply should suffice.
Adding anything else to the load might result in a need for more current, but that's it for now.
But not your project. It's questionable etiquette in the Arduino forum (so it seems) to ask folks to watch videos or guides that you're trying to follow. Most of the real gurus here (I am not one) are very busy it seems so it's best to meet at least halfway; it's your project, after all.
What do you want your project to do?
What are all the parts involved, including the display/use environment
Draw a picture of your proposed schematic/components/workflow
How are you making out? Any success so far? Where is it not working?
Post your code using code tags.
I imagine some in this forum won't even give your thread a look without these steps covered
I scanned that video and at 6:53 they say: "since the motors are already regulated for 5 volts, the microcontroller (Arduino Nano) itself can provide the power, we don't need an additional power supply, which helps us save space".
That seemed unusual since normally you never power motors and such with an Arduino, and in so checking, found this page from a minute ago: https://forum.arduino.cc/t/is-the-28byj-48-motor-really-that-weak/179512/10
On that page about halfway down is the same spec sheet they showed in the YouTube video. It says nothing about stall current for the motor but the linked page talks about that, too.
My project will use the Arduino Mega and needs to use 3 stepper motors because I will need 3 separate containers to dispense a medicine pill, one pill at a time.
I will use the TFT LCD Touch Display for user input and configurations of the Medicine Dispenser (set time, and names of the pills). with it, I will also use an RTC module as I want the device be time-sensitive in the prescribed time of consuming the medicine.
I have not yet started doing the construction of the actual product or even a schematic diagram because I am still very beginner and still kinda scared of continuing a wrong path so here I am still researching about what parts and power supplies must i use for this.
Even though the video didn't use power regulation, I still would. These motors can get hot. If a pill gets stuck, the current will increase to stall and with all the other devices, it's a bit of a gamble if the Arduino can handle it. It you burn the Arduino 5 volt regulator, you have to take it all apart and rebuild, which may be a lot of work depending on how you've installed everything. Better to do it right and use a buck converter for power regulation, convert 7-9 volts with 2-3 amp capacity from some wall wart power adapter, pick a line off the power adapter (just skin the cord in two places, offset and then properly insulated, wire in to that (in parallel) to make a 7 volt line to power the Arduino.
If you plan ahead, leave a USB connected to the Arduino, hot glued in place once you install everything so you can make easy code revisions later on). Tuck that USB away in case you need it after the whole thing is sealed up.
Then feed the rest of the wall wart into a buck converter/regulator and dial it into just over 5 volts (5.2, say) for the other 5 V devices.
Make sure all the grounds end up in one common place, a little bit of screw terminal strip is handy for this (and for making a 5 volt parallel power bus, for that matter, what screw terminal strips are usually used for).
One last thing (and it's important): I (me, just me the person literally typing this, I don't speak for anyone else here) I am the discount store version of Chat GPT at best. If you follow the advice ^ there, you still have to test test test as you go, build in stages. All I've said is how I would design the power handling for the project you linked to. I also know what magic blue smoke smells like, so take that as you will
Good luck.
OH I want to use the power suplies from the wall plugs
Since you are new to all of this and we don't want you to blow-up your brand new expensive Mega, I thing it best that you buy two power supplies. A 9V 1A supply for the Mega and a 5V 2A supply for the motors and drivers.
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