WiFi Stepper Motor Controller with Web-based Interface

The WiFi Stepper is a powerful and versatile wifi-connected stepper motor controller that can support a single stepper motor of up to 85 volts at 10 amperes. Today I’ll show you how to use this device along with its web-based user interface to perform all sorts of tricks with a NEMA 17 stepper motor.

Article for this video at https://dbot.ws/wifistep

WiFi Stepper on Crowd Supply - https://www.crowdsupply.com/good-robotics/wi-fi-stepper

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Today I’m testing a very interesting piece of technology that was sent to me by its creator, Andrew Klofas of Good Robotics. It’s a wifi-controlled stepper motor controller with some very impressive capabilities and specifications.

Andrew is crowdfunding this project on Crowd Supply - https://www.crowdsupply.com/good-robotics/wi-fi-stepper.

The device, as its name would imply, will allow you to control a stepper motor over wifi. It will support both very small and very large stepper motors, anything up to 85 volts at 10 amps!

I tested it with a 12-volt NEMA 17 type stepper motor and it performed very well. The web-based interface allowed mt to control=virtuially every aspect of the stepper, and it even allowed me to operate it in “Servo Mode”, giving my stepper motor “servo-like” behavior.

The board makes use of four main components:

ESP8266 WiFi controller.
powerSTEP01 stepper motor driver.
Microchip ATECC508A crypto-authentication module.
Maxim MAX15062 high-efficiency voltage regulator.

Together these work with a web-based interface that will allow you to drive a stepper motor in three different modes using either voltage or current control. It supports an external switch that can stop or reverse the motor, as well as several connections to both the ESP8266 and powerSTEP01 controller.

You can also make use of Bash or Python scripts to control the motor without the web-based interface, making it possible to incorporate the WiFi Stepper into your programs or automation sequences. I’ll show you an example using a Bash script on a Raspberry Pi.

Here is the Table of Contents for today's video:

00:00 - Introduction
03:02 - WiFi Stepper Motor Controller
07:13 - Getting Started
11:07 - Web-Based User Interface
13:58 - Speed Control Mode
18:04 - Voltage vs Current Control
20:44 - Servo Control Mode
22:44 - External Step Clock Mode
27:29 - Bash Scripts

As always I have an article that goes along with the video, you can find it at - https://dbot.ws/wifistep.