Research into Stepper Motors with the #RaspberryPi

I’ve decided that my next project with the Pi will involve motors of some sort. At the very least I’d like to work out how to control a motor and have it do… something. I’d like, ideally, to create some kind of remote-controlled vehicle. But, I know this isn’t exactly an original idea so it’ll be interesting to see if I can come up with something a bit unique. Whether I control the motor direct from the Pi or have some kind of Pi-Arduino interface is up for debate!

So, this post is all about research and will be a collection of links and tidbits that I’ve collected on the subject.

Some basic research…

First of all, over at tigoe.net, we have a blog post describing the different types of motors including unipolar, bipolar etc. Read the article.

Scrap to Power has a good article on connecting a stepper motor to the Pi. Read the article.

Francois Dion at Raspberry Pi Python Adventures has written some excellent blog posts on getting various motors working. Browsing around his site is great and he is the only blogger I know who posts in multiple languages! Read an article about stepper motors and another one about H Bridges.

Patrick Cambria has worked out how to run a uni-polar stepper using the Pi and Python. Read the article and watch the video.

Georgia-based John Jay has developed a board http://mypishop.com/Stepper.html and Robert Savage has written an article about setting it up.

Raspberry Pi Spy has an article about using a ULN2003 board and a 28BJY-48 motor. Read the article. The RaspiRobot blog has implemented the steps in the article and blogged about it.

Andy at PiStuffing has blogged about his experiments trying to create a TurtlePi and also a quad-copter. Read his blog.