Controller stepper motors A4988 using python

This construction of an automatic measuring station with a 3 axis scanner for ultrasonic examination of samples in transmission and reflection.

This project is stablish a connection with arduino to control 3 motors in 3 axis and is characterized for to have a module to calibrate and have more precision in the movement.

The connection is possible using pyfirmata to control the arduino nevertheless the Serial modules was implemented in the project and if possible to change change ArduinoController.py to ArduinoControllerSerial.py but it is recommend to keep as it is implemented now.

Installation

This project is working with

• python 3.11.0
• pyFirmata https://pypi.org/project/pyFirmata/
• tkinter https://docs.python.org/3/library/tkinter.html
• serial

Clone project

  git clone https://github.com/ale4a/controller-stepper-motors

Go to the project directory

  cd controller-stepper-motors

Run StandardFirmata on your Arduino board

First you have to configure your Arduino. This is really a quick step. Plug your Arduino to your computer with the USB cable, launch the Arduino IDE, and upload the StandardFirmata sketch to your board.

Make sure your Arduino board is selected in “Tools” > “Port”.

(Check out this StandardFirmata tutorial if you want to know more about Firmata on Arduino.)

Install dependencies

A great recommendation is to create environment variables for installations, go to the resources part of this readme.

First step

  pip install tk

Second step

  pip install pyFirmata

Third step

  pip install pyserial

Start the project execute index.py

How Calibrate

If you want to calculate the axis you need to good convert.py and change

• positiveSlope
• positiveConstant
• ERROR_WHEN_CHANGE_DIRECTION Getting closes to linear regression, at the moment one change will work for all axis but it is possible to change

If it is necessary review TableData.xlsx to understand how to get positiveSlope and positiveConstant

Control Panel

You need to choose the port after that you can control every button in the panel After that online press on button, it is necessary to wait a few minutes to establish the connection

Save current position

This project save current position using .txt if possible to save information in EEPROM but for simplicity it was preferred to use this method

Resources

This resources might be helpful if you want to modify the code

• Read docs to operation of arduino
• Template GUI
• What is environments in VSC
• EEPROM
• EEPROM with pyfirmata

Authors

@ale4a Alejandro Alvarez

Thank you for the opportunity :)