After double and triple checking wiring and everything, I can just say that the circuit is doing nothing. I’ve confirmed that the stepper motors common pin is the red pin depicted in the diagram (the one not connected to the circuit) by checking the resistances on the leads.
I’m thinking the error is somewhere in the circuit as the code makes sense. I changed the steps to equal a value hoping that was the resolution, but to yet again have nothing happen.
waltr:
How is the motor wired? The motor is a Uni-polar stepper.
Is that the motor driver chip in the protoboard? What chip is this?
If so then I only see two motor leads going the the chip.
Is my guess that the motor power supply is off the right side of the picture?
Is the two green wires from the UNO to the protoboard the common ground?
If the code can step very slowl then you can use your DMM (Voltmeter) to check the UNO outputs. Each should switch on/off.
Thank you for the reply. I’m using a L293D chip.
I have 4 motor leads going to the chip. Sorry for the horrible color coding of the wires. There basically isn’t any. Limited supply.
I’m attempting to power the motor via the arduino. I know this isn’t ideal, but a 5V stepper should be able to run ok from the board atleast for a little while. (this isn’t the permanent plan)
The two green wires from the uno are for ground and power.
It’s not the Volts you have to worry about, it’s the current. The arduino is not have enough current to move that motor. You will end burning the regulator or something else more expensive.
codlink:
It’s not the Volts you have to worry about, it’s the current. The arduino is not have enough current to move that motor. You will end burning the regulator or something else more expensive.
Yeah I’m aware of that. The tutorial shows powering the motor through the board so I think it can handle it. I’ve powered servos throgh the board before as well. Ill hook up a power supply tomorrow and try that but I have a feeling it won’t change anything.
The L293 is a dual H-bridge for use with Bi-polor stepper motors.
What you have seems to be a Uni-polar stepper motor.
The L293 can be used but the wiring to the stepper different than when used as a uni-polar.
For one the stepper’s common (red) wire is not used in bi-polar mode.
Give us a link to the exact stepper motor you have. Then we can confirm the motor type, how to wire it and its current draw requirement. It is likely the V regulator on the UNO will not power the stepper.
Show us the exact wiring of the L293.
Did you make the Voltage measurement I suggested?
Also, disconnect the motor and check the the UNO’s outputs are changing to verify the UNO is actually running.
Ok, through some work of magic. My teammate on this project started the wiring from scratch and followed the same procedures I did and got it to work. This was great until we found out the motor wasn’t nearly as efficient as we hoped so we ended up swapping it out and finding something with a lot more torque for our purpose.
Anyways. I solved the issue. It ended up running the 5V 32mA motor fine off of the board. Now we have something with like 12V 340A so we have an external power supply.
