stepper motor with arduino and labview

Hi guys,

For a project Im trying to control a stepper motor using labview. Im totally new to motors and electronics and greatly appreciate your help. If I use a NEMA 17 stepper motor and a stepper driver (P70530 by NI) can I use an Adruino micro-controller to control the motor rather than a NI motion controller or a DAQ device (which are pretty expensive) and then interface with labVIEW coding? If so would I be connecting the stepper driver with the Adruino? (i.e: motor-.>stepper driver-->Adruino-->PC-labview coding). As I said I've had no experience with these stuff..so please help !!

Thanks!!!

0 fuffkin over 13 years ago

There is a LabVIEW to Arduino toolkit that you can get. My understanding is that the Arduino runs a kind of server software that allows control of the Arduino I/O over the USB link from LabVIEW. So it looks like you need to set the Arduino to control the servo with either a shield or some interface electronics (google this and get a number of options) and then add the servo library to the arduino software and makes any mods to the labVIEW Vi's to control it. Basically with a few tweaks to both ends of the software it looks very doable.
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0 e14 Contributor over 13 years ago in reply to fuffkin

Thank you Jonathan !!
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0 e14 Contributor over 13 years ago

Guys,
Can someone tell me if Arduino micro-controllers are compatible with any type of stepper motor drives? And what exactly is a motor shield drive? Do I need that to run the motor? Im clueless about it It would be great if someone could list all the stuff I need to run a NEMA 17 type motor using Arduino interfaced by labVIEW.
Please help !! Thank you so much !!
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0 ntewinkel over 13 years ago in reply to e14 Contributor

I think this example from Arduino.cc will help you: http://arduino.cc/en/Tutorial/MotorKnob

It also explains stepper motors a bit - apparently there are two kinds, and it looks like either type will work with Arduino.

A motor drive shield is basically a board you plug into the Arduino that makes it easier to control a motor.
And from the example it looks like you don't need a shield, but it does look like you need a chip (the kind depends on the kind of stepper motor).

I don't know much about labView, but given that it can be done using the basic Arduino IDE, I would assume that the same thing can be done using other IDEs.

Good luck with the project, I hope this helps.

Cheers,
-Nico
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0 e14 Contributor over 13 years ago in reply to ntewinkel

Thank you so much for the help Nico !!!
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