For my first technical mock-up I needed a controller, a motor diver and a motor itself. For the controller I am using an Arduino based board and the motor driver will depend on the motor I am using. The motor needs to be able to rotate in both directions, only move a certain distance and hold a certain load when stationary. As I’ve never worked with electric motors before, I did some quick research to see which type of motor would best suit my needs. I came up with two options: a servo motor or a stepper motor. I chose the stepper motor for my project because it offers greater accuracy in movement, full torque at standstill and is more reliable with a longer life.1
Set-Up
For the first setup I chose a Wemos D1 mini board, which I have used in various projects, an A4988 driver module for the stepper motor, a MINEBA stepper motor with 200 steps and a step angle of 1.8°, a Breadboard and a 12v plug-in power supply.
The setup is influenced by the tutorial I found online on how to control stepper motors with an Arduino based board:
Control Stepper Motor with A4988 Driver Module and ESP8266 NodeMCU
This is also the tutorial I followed for my first steps.
Technical Mock-Up
Once everything was set up, I was able to control the stepper motor with the sample codes given in the tutorial in terms of interval, amount and direction of rotation, and additionally the acceleration of the movement, as shown in the videos below. This will be the basis for my upcoming first prototype of tap. The prototype will consist of two stepper motors mounted on top of each other and will already mimic the full functionality of tap.
Resources
