As well as working on my Arduino based "start here" robot with cheap geared DC motors, I've been planning out where I want to go next, and have been reading up on stepper motors. This seems like a cheap option for experimentation:
http://www.futurlec.com.au/Mini_SMCC.jsp
An informative controller card with a detachable, small, 7.5 degree stepper for just over ten dollars. A couple of these might make a more robust motor system for my starter 'bot. Anybody used these?
Just catching up on old
Just catching up on old posts, and I noticed no one responded to you.
Steppers are neat, but the disadvantage is that you need more output ports to drive one. The one linked in your post is going to require four digital outputs from your microprocessor, as opposed to the two outputs you need to control a regular DC motor through an h-bridge. So you’d need 8 outputs total just to control two motors.
The second problem is that the stepper you linked looks really small, and probably doesn’t have enough torque to push a robot. Though the page doesn’t provide any specifications for the motor, it looks about the size of something you’d see in a computer drive. Very small and weak, I’d guess.
If you want to experiment with steppers, you might be able to rescue a few from some old printers.
