PICStep WORKS!

Late last night in my little computer room PICStep breathed life into a small step-motor. At first triggered by a de-bounced push button, PICStep happily stepped the motor step by step in all modes. After a little more frig'n around I hooked PICStep up to a parallel port, increased the drive current up to 1.5A and the drive voltage to 34V, then connected up a higher powered motor, and then started up TurboCNC on my test PC. And voilà! Full micro-stepping action!!!

This controller works better than I could have hoped for, it's quite, it runs cool, it can handle pulse rates up to at least 16KHz (I could go higher but my motor cannot spin that fast without stopping!).

The enable (the BRAKE on the LMD18245) line works well too, as soon as it's brought high or disconnected from ground the motors stop instantly with braking. Perfect for the emergency stop button on any machine. Rather than the motors coasting to a stop, they now just halt in their tracks!

The firmware works well, but I want to put a little polish into it's operation like, automatic current reduction on a time-out, 1/16 stepping mode, a watchdog timer in case the PIC crashes (I had this happen due to a spike when I was switching the motor power on and off), and a start-up self test.

Otherwise I'm stoked at this thing. I'm really considering getting some professional boards made up via CustomPCB.

So if you're interested in some boards, please let me know ASAP and I'll place an order depending on demand.