16th stepping stepper motor with A4988 driver carrier from Pololu

December 30, 2013
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So in an effort to control the stepper motors more accurately I’ve invested in some Pololu Stepper motor driver carrier boards. This gives 2 advantages over a traditional H bridge arrangement,

  • Micro stepping,
  • Current limiting.

Using the diagram from here but with a few changes, I pulled ms1,2,3 to high to enable a resolution of 16 microsteps, and wired it to an Arduino for control.

#define stepPin 2
#define dirPin 3
#define enablePin 4
void setup()
{
pinMode(enablePin, OUTPUT);
digitalWrite(enablePin, HIGH);
pinMode(stepPin, OUTPUT);
pinMode(dirPin, OUTPUT);
digitalWrite(enablePin, LOW);
delayMicroseconds(10);
digitalWrite(dirPin, HIGH);
}
void loop()
{
digitalWrite(stepPin, LOW);
delayMicroseconds(2);
digitalWrite(stepPin, HIGH);
delayMicroseconds(80);
}

this simple code allowed me to achieve around 3.8 revolutions per second, or ~230rpm. Which is a lot more than in full stepping mode without jumping.