An Arduino Mega landed on my door step last week and I have been playing with it ever since. It was purchased from Australianrobotics.com.au for only $46AUD ($42USD) due to their grand opening special. I have the intent of eventually making the pololu strip board stepper controller designed by Adrian.
The Arduino Mega
This is the first time I have used a microcontroller so before jumping into the deep end it was time to learn the basics.
This involved:
- Downloading and installing the software.
- Uploading the ‘hello world’ LED blinki to test that the board works.
- Following the first 5 steps of this fantastic guide on writing code for the Arduino and making it do some functional tasks.
- Following this less well written guide to make a 3x3x3 Led cube with some nice animations.
The 5 step guide was by far the most instructive. However the LED cube was also easy to build and rewarding when you get to see the pre written animations.
None of this is strictly required to produce the pololu stepper controller, but it cant hurt to learn the basics underpinning the Arduino.
Next task is to hobble together the pololu stepper controller.
The Pololu Driver, strip board and parts needed for the pololu electronics.
Hopefully I get some time to work on this soon.
Make sure you’re careful with the stepper boards because they are very sensitive to heat and static. I easily burned mine out not knowing what I was doing. You’ll definitely need a fan or some heat sinks for them.
Thanks for the heads up. I may try and glue on a very small flat topped bolt with heat sinking adhesive and see how that goes.