Hi there,
My electronic skills are quite limited, but I am trying to improve them. So far, my experience can be summed up in one project - a tachometer. It was based around an Atmel 8052 microcontroller. All it did was basically count the number of pulses from a hall effect sensor in 1 second and then display the RPM on a 16x2 LCD.
In the not-too-distant future (like in a few months time), I am hoping to experiment a bit with controlling stepper motors using an 8052. I'm not entirely sure how to approach this, but had a few ideas and was looking for some suggestions and ideas (and criticism, provided it doesn't hurt my feelings too much ).
A thought I had, was to use a readily available control board (something like a Xylotex board). The motors would then obviously be connected up to this and the STEP and DIR signals would be provided by the 8052. The first question is whether this basic idea is feasible?
ie. 8052 MCU > Xylotex (or similar) > stepper motors.
If the above is feasible, my next question is what are the requirements for STEP and DIR signals for a board like the Xylotex? With my current 'understanding', the DIR line is either held high or low and this decides direction of rotation, while a high/low transition on the STEP line will cause the motor to advance one step. Am I correct so far?
If I am correct up to here, then what would the specific requirements be on the STEP and DIR signals? How long does each need to be held etc etc?
I hope this post makes sense - I guess I'll soon find out...
Regards
Warren