Arduino Shift Register Stepper Motor Controller

This is my first "reader requested" post. A reader sent me an email asking me to do a post about controlling a stepper motor using a shift register, and here it is. In this post I will specifically discuss controlling a 28BYJ-48 stepper motor with a 74HC595 shift register, ULN2003, and Arduino.

First of all, I need to explain what a shift register is. Rather than doing that however, I will differ you to THIS page. It does an excellent job of introducing shift registers and provides some really easy to use sample Arduino code. My code is based off of the functions on that page. I will be using a 74HC595 shift register. I chose it because it is pretty common. I got mine off of eBay, but you can buy them at various vendors.

Second, I should point you to some information on the stepper motor I will be using. It is a 28BYJ-48 stepper motor. It is the same one I used in the two posts(Arduino Control and ATtiny Control). If you need it, those two pages have links to some good reference material.

Third, like in the other cases, I will be using a ULN2003 to drive the stepper. This is pretty common with this board. However, this time I just wired it up on my breadboard rather than using the control board that came with my stepper. I did this because I intended to solder together a whole control board. In the end, I decided I didn't have a need for it at the moment and just left it breadboarded. I can always solder it later.


Now, wiring this project has a few more wires than some of my others, so I threw out all the stops and made a Fritzing schematic. When you look at it, wiring is not terribly complicated; the wires just get crossed easily.

So here is what is going on. The Arduino is controlling the shift register like described in the link I provided above. The shift register outputs are fed into the ULN2003. The ULN2003 acts as a switch and allows the stepper to draw the current that it needs to operate.

One thing you may wish to change, in this diagram I have the stepper being driven by the 5V from the Arduino. It may be wise to drive it from an external 5V source if you are doing more than one. Also, the colors on the stepper (or even the order of the wires) can vary from vendor to vendor. Basically, if the stepper just sits there and grinds against itself, switch the wires.

Another thing that confused me for a little while, the ULN2003 sinks current (as opposed to sourcing current). That is, it allows the output to be a path to ground if the input is HIGH. If you wire the stepper like shown above it should work. The trouble comes when people like me want to test it with an LED before connecting the stepper. I connected the positive end to the ULN2003 and the negative to ground. Eventually, I realized my mistake and switched it. Long story short, to test with an LED, put the "negative" end on the ULN2003 output and the "positive" on 5V.

Here is my setup for this project. The sketch I used is an adaption of one of the sketches from my previous posts. Basically, where there was a digitalWrite I put a setRegisterPin. A potentiometer controls the speed. Get my code HERE. 

The motor did not turn very quickly (around 10 seconds a revolution), I suppose I shouldn't have expected much more considering all the delays the shift register puts into the system, but if you ever needed to control a large number of stepper motors on only a few pins maybe this would be an option. If you do plan on that, you might note that the ULN2003 only has 7 inputs/outputs, so be sure to get the right number of parts.

Also, it  appears that this sketch could very easily be wrapped into a library. Perhaps the stepper library could be edited to utilize a shift register. Regardless, that is beyond the scope of this post. I leave that to the reader (though feel free to tell us about it in comments).

Hopefully this is useful to someone. If anyone else has suggestions for posts, let me know. The reader requested label is looking pretty lonely.

-Matthew

DHT11 on ATtiny85

Recently I got my DHT11 temperature and humidity sensor working with my Arduino Mega2560. If you are interested in that, check it out HERE. However, while that was all well and good, I found it a bit impractical. While I may someday decide to create some sort of weather logger using the DHT11, it is unlikely that I would dedicate an entire Arduino to the task. Enter ATtiny85.

The ATtiny85 is great because it is cheap, but the real question is, "Does it work with the DHT11?" Yes it does.

Now in my last post I used the DHT library from Adafruit. While that library served its purpose, it does not work with the ATtiny. Don't ask me why; I did not explore it. HERE is another report of it not working and a description of what will happen if you try it. It reads out all zeros.

What does work is the DHT11 library. To get it working you will need to modify the example code. Basically, you need to change everything that says "Serial" to the Software Serial equivalent. This will allow us to get the sensor readings back from the ATtiny. If you want more information on serial communication on an ATtiny, check out THIS post. Alternatively, you could just download my code (HERE), wire everything the way I say, and see if it works.

Now when you go to compile my example, there is a good chance you will run into a problem. As it turns out,  there is an issue with the tiny core when trying to compile sketches close to the maximum sketch size. Luckily there is a quick and easy fix. I won't go into the details, but follow the instructions HERE.

When that was straightened out I was able to upload my sketch successfully. I used my USBtinyISP and my ATtiny85/45 programming adapter.

The only thing left to do is wire it up and see the output. Basic wiring of the DHT11 is the same as in my last post.

Correct Wiring:
Pin 1: +5V
Pin 2: Signal. Connect to digital IO with a 5k ohm pull-up resistor
Pin 3: Nothing. Some people suggest grounding it if you run into trouble
Pin 4: GND

On the ATtiny side, PB3 is the software serial Rx and PB4 is the software serial Tx. Connect those to an FTDI (or some other serial receiving device). Connect 5V and ground.

Power it up and watch the show!

This of course could be modified to do other things with the temperature data. It could, for instance, transmit them via I2C. Maybe it could log them on an SD card. Those projects I leave to you (for now anyway). If you are interested in more ATtiny projects of mine, check out my ATtiny label. Let me know if this works or doesn't work for you. As always, I'm happy to help.

-Matthew

DHT11 with Adafruit Library and Arduino Mega 2560

In this post I will be playing with the DHT11 Temperature and Humidity Sensor with my Arduino Mega 2560. While a DHT22 could also be used, I used a DHT11 mostly because it and it was cheap. I think I got mine for around a dollar. They can also be found it premade breakouts, but there really isn't much to them. As you can tell from the picture in the link, the breakout merely removes the extra pin and adds the pull-up resistor and a decoupling capacitor.

Once you decide on which sensor to buy, you will be faced with yet another choice. What library should I use? There are approximately a lot of them out there. I chose the Adafruit DHT library found HERE. It worked for me (and supports multiple sensors), so I saw little reason to pursue any of the other libraries.

This does NOT work

Now when I bought my DHT11 from Ebay, a picture like this was on the listing. Quite frankly, I don't understand what this is getting at. It doesn't work. While I can't vouch for the rest of the world, my sensor is not analog. It is digital. You can even look at the datasheet.

Correct Wiring:
Pin 1: +5V
Pin 2: Signal. Connect to digital IO with a 5k ohm pull-up resistor
Pin 3: Nothing. Some people suggest grounding it if you run into trouble
Pin 4: GND

Once everything is wired up, open the example sketch. It does about everything I would want it to do, so there is not much to say. Uncomment the correct sensor and upload. Open the serial monitor and get testing. 

There isn't much to say about this sensor. It is slow and probably not too accurate, but with the hard work of making the library already done, this sensor is incredibly easy to use. If you don't like my description of this sensor, there are many others out there at your disposal. If you do like it, I'm glad I could be of help.

-Matthew