Micro Maestro controlling a Steppermotor?

Support Motor controllers/drivers and motors
1

Hi,
I have a project where i used a micro maestro to control 2 servos. Due to repeated problems with one of the servos i’ve replaced it with a stepper motor. For control i’m using a Tic T500, hooked up to the maestro via the RC connector. Below a summary of the hardware:
-Micro Maestro
-Tic T500
-Nema 17 Steppermotor (4V, rated current: 1,2A)
-Power supply (to the tic) 12V 2A

The stepper motor is functional in this setup. However, it tends to jitter (especialy near the end of a turn), also it appears to wander off the set end position. (When playing a sequence in a loop (maestro software) the end position seems to go progressively further off target.).
Possibly the jittering causes the wandering off target(?) Jittering occurs regardles of the speedsetting of the motor.

My knowledge of electronics is fairly basic, i love the comprehensive guides for the Pololu products. However, when it gets really technical i can get a little lost in the information overload… :sweat_smile: I’m hoping someone can help me sorting this out.

What i’d like to know is:
Is it possible to get a reliable system using a steppermotor controlled via RC signal (from a maestro)?
If so, what can i do to improve the performance? (settings?)
If not, is there another way to get the stepper to be more reliable (preferably using the existing hardware)?

Hope to be hearing, thanks in advance! :sunglasses:

Best regards,
Hans

2

Hello.

It should be possible to get a reliably repeatable behavior using the Maestro to send RC signals to a Tic. There could be a number of things causing the stepper motor to drift like you described. One possibility is that your stepper motor could be missing steps. What do you have the current limit set to on the Tic? If you remove the stepper motor from your system (so there is no load on it), does it still jitter and drift? You might also try slowing down the stepper motor by decreasing the “Starting speed”, “Max speed”, and “Max acceleration” settings on the Tic to see if that helps; all of those settings can be found in the “Input and motor settings” tab of the Tic Control Center software.

If the problem is still occurring, could you post your Tic and Maestro settings files? You can save the settings files for each device by selecting the “Save settings file…” option within the “File” drop-down menu of their respective control center software while the device is connected. A brief video showing the problem might be helpful as well.

Brandon