Unipolar stepper motors are easy to control at the cost of low efficiency and power. Bipolar stepper motors have much higher efficiency and torque; however they are much harder to control. To fully control one, two H-bridges are required. Luckily there are multiple Arduino-compatible bipolar stepper drivers out there. Here we will explore a few options.
We can control a bipolar stepper motor using the Arduino Motor Shield. Here are the ingredients needed for this recipe:
An Arduino board connected to a computer via USB
An Arduino Motor Shield
A bipolar stepper motor
We connect the stepper motor to the shield using the following steps:
Carefully mount the Arduino Motor Shield on top of the Arduino. Be careful not to bend any pins.
Identify the two coils. Use a multimeter to measure the resistance between all the wires. The ones with a low resistance in between are the coils.
Connect the four stepper wires to the main terminal output of the Shield....