Wednesday, November 4, 2009

EasyDriver V4.2 is out!


Great News!

Brian Schmalz has released a new Easy Driver Board!

It has some great new features. The most notable one for me is the ability to access the chip's logic that can switch to micro, half and full step methods. It also now has pretty lights and a more usable trim pot.

I've just ordered three of these from sparkfun cause good things come in threes! Check out Brian's Easy Driver Site for all the details.

Thanks Brian for this brilliant piece of hardware!

Update! Check out my EasyDriver v4.2 Tutorial post.

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hey Dan,

I am currently a media arts student and am having trouble setting up my stepper motor with the 4.2 easydriver board. I have used your sample code, however my results are not in line with yours. The motor runs differently every time the code is uploaded to the Arduino.

Thanks

Dan Thompson said...

Hi there,

I plan on doing another tutorial for version 4.2 but it may be a while before I get time to do so. For now I would recommend following the notes on Brian's Easydrive page. He has a great Q and A section that has been updated recently.

Beyond that, I would recommend either the sparkfun or Arduino forums or if you get really stuck, email Brian.

Good luck with your course and you projects!

Dan.

keen101 said...

Hey Dan,

it would be sweet if you could try doing a musical stepper motor test code, when you get around to doing the tutorial for the 4.2 version. Like the http://vimeo.com/3978871 one. I am hoping to make a repstrap machine with the easydrivers, and it would be cool if you could make it easier. :)

Anonymous said...

Dan,

I am a beginner with stepper motors but I have an application that needs one. I have purchased the Arduino Duemilanove and the Easy Driver v4.2, along with the Sparkfun stepper motor. I viewed your earlier tutorial on the v3.1 and wonder if you can help me with some code on the new ED v4.2. I would like to enable the pin that shut off the current between steps. I need 40 steps per rpm with about 12-15 seconds between steps which would be controlled by a limit switch. I also want to shut down permanently after the 40 steps and wait for a power on command to repeat the 40 steps again. All steps are in the same direction. I wired the pins on a breadboard exactly as you did for v3.1, but of course that does not utilize all of the new controls in v4.2.

Thanks for help at least in v3.1.
Regards,

Ken

Marcel said...

Version 4.3 is out! four.point.THREE

My two new boards arrived today, yay!

I don't yet know how the .3 boards differ from the .2s

A web search produces no results. Do I have the first 4.3s!?

I feel special.

:)

[m]

Marcel said...

AHA!

(Look before you post! Look before you post!)

The difference is two whumping great big mounting holes!

One where the 'schmalzhaus' house logo used to be - with the logo now moved down. The other on the left end of the Allegro chip, where the 4.2 board is marked 'cur adj'.

There.

[m]

(would send a pic if I had your email address)

jake carvey said...

I got EasyDriver 4.2 working, with both the Sparkfun NEMA 17 stepmotor (boy its WARM right now)

and a Circuit Specialists NEMA 23 (57BYGH2007)

nothing much different than the original tutorial, but there is a ground terminal conviently located next to the STEP and DIR connections.

Modified the code to move in one direction, and declared variables for important parameters, so we can eventually connect them to joystick, LCD display, etc.

Unknown said...

@jakecarvey Could you link us to this code?