Hi, I am posting on this forum as a member of my schools robotics club. we are just starting and are about to build our first robot. we have decided that we will have all four wheels of our robot driven by stepper motors. our club has considered using an orangutan x2 board to control 4 A4988 Stepper Motor Driver Carrier which would control the stepper motors, would this work? also we are unsure of how to control this wirelessly from our laptop which is how we were going control the robot, and what type of battery should be used. Any help would be greatly appreciated.Thanks in advance.
Your description is certainly feasible but it seems strange to me. Stepper motors usually do not generate enough torque to be used in wheeled robots compared to what you can get from brushed, DC motors. Do you have a special reason for wanting to use stepper motors?
For your wireless problem, I would recommend our Wixel wireless module. The power supply depends heavily on what motors you choose and the general scale of things. What motors do you intend to use?
- Ryan
The only reason we were planing on using stepper motors was for precision driving, however that is not absolutely needed. If we were to use DC motors, what would you suggest, and what would we control them with as opposed to the stepper motor drivers?
That is a good reason to use stepper motors, but I think you will find that precision driving/positioning is hard. Another option to consider is DC motors with encoders like pololu.com/catalog/product/2275. In either case though, something can slip and you can end up off from where you expected to be!
We offer many different DC motor drivers and motor controllers. What to use depends on what motors you decide to use.
- Ryan