Tic36v4 stepper motor Serial/USB/I2C with GUI

Hi I have a simple question, when setting up the control to serial/USB/I2C mode, there is the possibility to set the target position, then the motor moves, however I have a question regarding the field “Current position” , this “Current position” is it an estimated position or is it the actual position? Can I trust this value? Because I thought I would need an encoder to get the reading of the motor position…

Shouldn’t I need an encoder to get the actual position? Is it enaugh to perfmor a control loop with this current position variable?

Thanks a lot for your help!

Kind regards.

Hello.

Stepper motors do not give any feedback about their position to the controller, and the Tic does not support external feedback from encoders. The “current position” variable is the position that the Tic thinks the motor is in and uses to base it’s movements off of. If the motor misses steps or moves while it is de-energized, it will not match the actual position of the stepper motor.

Whether or not relying on the Tic’s internal position variable is practical depends on your application. The Tic does support limit switches, so you could use that as feedback to reset the “current position” with the Tic’s homing procedure. You can read more about this feature in the “Setting up limit switches and homing” section of the Tic user’s guide

Brandon