A4988 Stepper Motor Driver Setup

Hi,
I am new to stepper motors and cannot figure out how to connect my A4988 Stepper Motor Driver, I am using a Orangutan 1284 micro-controller and am using my servo wires/programming(Which cannot be correct?)
My setup is the following, what am I doing wrong:

VMOT: Hobby 5.10 volt battery.
GND: Ground for the above battery.
2B: Stepper motor pair 1 of 2
2A: Stepper motor pair 2 of 2
1A: Stepper motor pair 1 of 2
1B: Stepper motor pair 2 of 2
VDD: 4.8 volts from MCU pin, programmed high
GND: Ground for the above
EN: Nothing here
MS1: Nothing here
MS2: Nothing here
MS3: Nothing here
RST: Jumped to SLP
SLP:
STEP: Servo pin#0(pin farthest to the right)
DIR: Ground from Servo #0

Where does everything go? I cannot get this to work. Please diagram your answer like I did above.
Also, how do you program a stepper motor on Atmel 6.2? What is the command word, its not on the svp-1284 user guide.
Please help, Thanks in advance!

[quote]2B: Stepper motor pair 1 of 2
2A: Stepper motor pair 2 of 2
1A: Stepper motor pair 1 of 2
1B: Stepper motor pair 2 of 2[/quote]
The above makes no sense.
You have two windings. One winding goes to 1A and 1B, the other to 2A and 2B.

[quote]STEP: Servo pin#0(pin farthest to the right)
DIR: Ground from Servo #0[/quote]
The above also makes no sense. What is a servo pin?
You should connect STEP and DIR to two digital output pins on the microprocessor. Set the pins HIGH and LOW to step and change direction.

You should not attempt use an MCU output pin to power the motor driver.

What is that? Does it produce voltage in the range of 8-35V as required by the motor driver?
Can it provide the current required by the stepping motors?
What stepping motors are you intending to use?

Carefully follow the instructions and clear wiring diagram here: pololu.com/product/1182

I have corrected my mistakes, thanks to Jim, However I still need help on how to control the driver with my MCU, how do I connect it and how do I program it on Atmel studio? I need more details. Please explain very thoroughly. Thanks

[quote]However I still need help on how to control the driver with my MCU, how do I connect it[/quote] What part of the wiring diagram on the Pololu page don’t you understand?

There are several stepping motor programming tutorials on the web, easily found using Google.
Here is one: extremeelectronics.co.in/avr-tut … -tutorial/

For programming the SVP-1284, consult the programming guide, software libraries and simple examples provided by Pololu, as mentioned on this page: pololu.com/product/1328/resources

However, first be sure to set the current limit on the motor driver as appropriate for the motor, carefully following the directions on the Pololu pages.

I don’t understand how to connect the MCU to the stepper driver. On my driver specifically “A4988 Stepper Motor Driver Carrier” what gets connected to the STEP and DIR pins, the diagram of the stepper and its picture does not help, it shows two lines going to it, but what do those lines represent? On my MCU the “Orangutain svp-1284” where do those lines connect to?

Also, to program on Atmel studio I thought I needed to type a pulse integer which would determine what angle my stepper motor would rotate to, not a HIGH or LOW command, like what was previously suggested. That is why in the beginning I hooked it up as if it were a servo, with the pulsing/sensor wire to the STEP pin and GND to the DIR pin.

My MCU’s digital I/O pins have 3 spots per channel= sensor,vcc,gnd. I dont see how I could connect one wire from 2 different I/O pins, like what was suggested in the above quote. Also, my understanding was that these stepper drivers need some kind of a pulse on the STEP pin, not a solid 5 volts from my MCU like what was suggested in your previous post.

Please explain very thoroughly, like I am 85 years old and am new to all things electronic! Thank you.

Your setup may never work. You have not provided enough information for us to help, as you have not answered the questions I’ve already asked.

You need to spend some time looking at the various stepping motor tutorials on the web. All the information you need is already out there, so it is pointless to repeat it in this forum.

Pololu employee,

I am new to stepper motors and need some clarification.
-When using my MCU, which is a Orangutain svp-1284, where do the STEP and DIR pins of the driver go to on my board?
-when programming on Atmel Studio how do I program the stepper? How do I program the pulses that make the driver work?
-When using the DIR pin how do you put a Positive current and then a Gnd current, to control direction?

Please explain very thoroughly, as if I am 83 years old and am new to all things electronic! Thanks

As a first project, this is very clearly too difficult for you.

I suggest to begin with an Arduino and learn the examples provided with the free program development software. Start with blinking an LED, etc. before moving on to stepper motors.

Hello.

We generally expect our users to have some familiarity with basic electronics or a willingness to put forth the effort to learn how they work. There is a great deal of flexibility in the way our products can be used together and it is unreasonable to expect someone to produce a detailed tutorial for a specific combination of products that is just right for your application.

As Jim mentioned, you will probably want to connect the STEP and DIR pins to two of the digital I/O pins on the microprocessor. We do not have example code for controlling that driver with an Orangutan, however the basic control protocol for these two pins is fairly simple and is discussed in the “Control inputs” section of the product page for the stepper driver Jim provided a link to earlier. If it is not clear, the “pulse to the STEP input” this section of the product page refers to is a transition of any digital output pin (or other signal source the STEP pin on the stepper driver is connected to) from LOW (0 V) to HIGH (5 V for the Orangutan).The operation of the DIR pin is also discussed on the product page. The code required to toggle digital I/O pins on the Orangutan HIGH or LOW is in the Pololu AVR C/C++ Library User’s Guide, which is linked to on the resources tab of the Orangutan SVP-1284 Robot Controller product page, which Jim also linked to earlier.

If you provide a updated wiring diagram with the corrections you made after your first post, I can look at it to see if there is anything that will not work in there.

Finally, I noticed you started a new thread with a copy of the text from the previous post. We prefer to keep all discussion of an issue in a single thread to make it easier for others to follow, so I have deleted the new thread.

-Nathan