Controlling stepper motors

Stepper motor is the common name for a step motor. They are motors that are controllable using small steps.

The full rotation is divided into a number of equal steps and the motors' positions can be controlled to move and hold at one of these steps easily with a high degree of accuracy, without any feedback mechanism.

There are a series of electromagnetic coils that can be charged positively or negatively in a specific sequence. Controlling the sequence provides control about the movement, forward or backward in small steps.

Of course, we can do that using Arduino boards.

We are going to examine the unipolar stepper here.

Wiring a unipolar stepper to Arduino

Unipolar steppers usually consist of a center shaft part and four electromagnetic coils. We call them unipolar because power comes in through one pole. We can draw it as follows:

A six-pin unipolar step motor

Let's check how it can be wired to our Arduino.

We need to supply power to the stepper from an external source...