Stepper driver or not

[Jeff Johnson]

Before I call this guy out for having a bad title, I thought I would make absolutely sure.

Take a look at this part on ebay:  http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=170926726867

Now I have used these type before from other suppliers as a nice driver for DC motors since you can control speed and direction.  They work nice for small DC motors, especially mini sumobots.  In fact, if we ever set up a "parts store" I'd like to have a bunch of these stocked for members.

But this guy is calling this a STEPPER motor driver, and though I know you can use the L298 for stepper motors, I don't think this circuit would act as a stepper driver.  Any thoughts?

Here is a PDF of a user manual from a different supplier of a very similar (if not duplicate) board:  https://solarbotics.com/download.php?file=43

[Jason Brown]

The L298 is a dual H bridge IC and is commonly used to drive two brushed dc motors, or one stepper motor. 

However It does not have advanced stepper motor functions like current chopping or micro stepping, but those can be implemented in a microcontroller or arduino.

Jason Brown

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Chattlab Chattanooga" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to chattlab-lis...@googlegroups.com.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

[Jeff Johnson]

Ah, okay.  Thanks.

[fakermage]

How good are those? Spark Fun sells them for 30 something dollars but its 3 dollars on Ebay?

[Jeff Johnson]

Yes, they do work well.  The ones I bought were for 15 volts, and I overdrove it to 24 volts for about 3 hours before it stopped working.  I then switched over to another one and ran it with 12 volts and its been doing fine.

So look at the upper voltage limit if you want to drive higher voltage (like a 24 volt motor).

I was amazed myself.  

[Jeff Johnson]

One thing to consider is that the sparkfun model may come with a heat sink, and most of these on ebay don't.  You can get them for a few more bucks on ebay though.