Easy Driver Hook-up Guide

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Contributors: Toni_K
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Hardware Hookup

Connect Motor Coil Wires

You will need to determine the wire pairs for each coil on the motor you plan to use. The most reliable method to do this is to check the datasheet for the motor.

Motor Coil Diagram

Coil wire diagram from the datasheet our NEMA 16 Stepper Motor with Cable.

However, if you are using a 4-wire or 6-wire stepper motor, it is still possible to determine the coil wire pairs without the datasheet.

For a 4-wire motor, take one wire and check its resistance against each of the three remaining wires. Whichever wire shows the lowest resistance against the first wire is the pair mate. The remaining two wires should show similar resistance between the two of them.

For a 6-wire motor, you will need to determine which of three the wires go together for one coil. Pick one wire, and test this against all other wires. Two wires should show some resistance between them and the first wire picked, while the other three will show no connection at all. Once the three wires for one coil have been determined, find two of the three that show the highest resistance between them. These will be your two coil wires. Repeat for the second group of three wires.

Once you have determined the coil wire pairs, you will need to attach them to the Easy Driver. The first coil pair should be plugged into Coil A+ and Coil A-, while the second coil pair plugs into Coil B+ and Coil B-. There is no polarity on the coils, so you don’t need to worry about plugging in a coil backwards on the board. In our example, we are using a 4-coil motor. The connections between the Easy Driver and motor are as follows.

Easy Driver → Motor

  • A+ → Green Wire
  • A- → Red Wire
  • B+ → Blue Wire
  • B- → Yellow Wire
Note: Do not connect or disconnect the motor while the Easy Driver is powered. If any of the motor wires comes loose while power is applied, the driver can be damaged.

Connect a Power Supply

Once your motor is connected, you can then connect a power supply to the Easy Driver. You can use any kind of power supply (desktop, wall adapter, battery power, etc.), but verify that whatever choice you go with is capable of providing up to 2A and falls in the range of 6V to 30V.

Connect the power supply to M+ and GND. REMEMBER to disconnect the power before connecting/disconnecting your motor.

Connect a Microcontroller

For this example, we will be using the SparkFun RedBoard. However, any microcontroller that works at 3.3V or 5V logic and has digital I/O with PWM capability will work for this example.

Here are the following pin connections for our example.

RedBoard → Easy Driver

  • D2 → STEP
  • D3 → DIR
  • D4 → MS1
  • D5 → MS2
  • D6 → ENABLE

Final Circuit

Once you have everything connected, your circuit should look like the following:

final circuit