OVERVIEW
Here’s a fun and easy way to control a Stepper motor at a distance using an IR Remote control.
The stepper we are using comes with its own driver board making it easy to connect to our UNO.
Since we don’t want to drive the motor directly from the UNO, we will be using an inexpensive little breadboard power supply that plugs right on our breadboard and power it with a 9V 1Amp power supply.
The IR sensor is connected to the UNO directly since it uses almost no power.
PARTS USED
Breadboard Power Supply
IR Remote with receiver
Stepper Motor
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CONNECTIONS
We are using 4 pins to control the Stepper and 1 pin for the IR sensor.
Pin 8-11 are controlling the Stepper motor and pin 6 in Receiving the IR information.
We connect the 5V and Ground from to UNO to the sensor and as a precaution, use a breadboard power supply to power the Stepper motor since it can use more power and we don’t want to damage the power supply of the UNO.
THE CODE
We use 2 Libraries in our Sketch: “IRremote” and “Stepper”.
The “Stepper” library is included by default with the Arduino Software install.
You will need to download the “IRremote” library and extract it to your Library folder.
The code below only recognize 2 values from the IR Remote control: UP and DOWN.
When UP is pressed on the remote the motor will make a full rotation clockwise.
DOWN will make a full rotation counter-clockwise.
As always you can have a look at the tutorial video for more information.
#include "Stepper.h"
#include "IRremote.h"
/*----- Variables, Pins -----*/
#define STEPS 32 // Number of steps per revolution of Internal shaft
int Steps2Take; // 2048 = 1 Revolution
int receiver = 6; // Signal Pin of IR receiver to Arduino Digital Pin 6
/*-----( Declare objects )-----*/
// Setup of proper sequencing for Motor Driver Pins
// In1, In2, In3, In4 in the sequence 1-3-2-4
Stepper small_stepper(STEPS, 8, 10, 9, 11);
IRrecv irrecv(receiver); // create instance of 'irrecv'
decode_results results; // create instance of 'decode_results'
void setup()
{
irrecv.enableIRIn(); // Start the receiver
}
void loop()
{
if (irrecv.decode(&results)) // have we received an IR signal?
{
switch(results.value)
{
case 0xFF629D: // UP button pressed
small_stepper.setSpeed(500); //Max seems to be 700
Steps2Take = 2048; // Rotate CW
small_stepper.step(Steps2Take);
delay(2000);
break;
case 0xFFA857: // DOWN button pressed
small_stepper.setSpeed(500);
Steps2Take = -2048; // Rotate CCW
small_stepper.step(Steps2Take);
delay(2000);
break;
}
irrecv.resume(); // receive the next value
}
}/* --end main loop -- */TUTORIAL VIDEO
DOWNLOAD
Copy and paste the above code in the Arduino IDE to program your Arduino.
Used Libraries:
Download the IRremote created by Ken Shirriff here:
Once downloaded, just extract the content of the zip files inside your “arduino/libraries” folder.
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