bipolar stepper

Bipolar stepper motor control with Arduino and an H-Bridge

It is a well known fact that Stepper motors are awesome! The only downside is that they can be a bit trickier to get going than servos and plain old DC motors. If you are interested in the inner mechanics and theory of stepper motors, check this excellent post on PCB heaven. If you happen to have one of the cheap little 28BYJ-48 steppers with 5 wires  and a little driver board with them, check this tutorial instead. Here, I will focus on how to get a bipolar stepper motor (typically 4 wires) working with Arduino and a H-Bridge IC like the L293D , or the drop in improved replacement - SN754410NE .(more…)

Stepper motor wiring tutorial

Occasionally you may come across an old stepper motor salvaged from a printer, or an ancient floppy drive. If you are lucky, there will be a part number on the motor and after some digging around, you will come up with a datasheet. Often though, you will have a motor with no markings whatsoever and four, or six colourful wires sticking out. First, you need to figure out how the wires are paired to form coils within the motor. Trial and error may work, but there is a better way! All it takes is a multimeter. (more…)