Controlling a stepper motor from windows

Help & Support Robot Parts
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Hi all, I’m going to apologise in advance for asking this question as it’s been covered many times. However the more I read into it the more I’m getting confused (partly arduino’s fault). I’m new to robotics and wanted to start out fairly simple (or so I thought).

In short, I want to control a stepper motor from windows and make it turn 180° and then on command, turn back 180°.

1 - What hardware do I need to achieve this?
2 - What software controls are available or how to talk from windows to this.

I’d like a sign mounted on a stepper motor to turn half a turn to show one side. Then from a command (not sure if push button or touch screen) to turn the sign back to show the other side.

Thank you all so much in advance.

Jason

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Hello @Jasonf91 and welcome to the RobotShop forum,

Do you already have the stepper motor?

First, you need to select the motor you are going to use and then you can choose the motor controller, here you can find some tips to choose one:

If you want to control it with a Windows PC a good option are the Pololu Tic Stepper Motor Controllers which have Software and Drivers for Windows.

I hope that helps!

Let me know if you need further assistance

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A post was split to a new topic: Stepper Motor Control + Arduino

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Hi @Jasonf91
if you want to use WiFi to control a stepper, you can use an ESP32 module plus the TIC controller @geraldinebc15 mentioned.
The ESP32 would store it’s own small HTML-page and you could reach it from smartphone or PC.
There are tons of tutorials and sample programs about Internet of Things (IoT) for home-automation