Arduino Joystick Controlled Stepper Motor

In this post, I am gonna show you how to control 2 Unipolar Stepper Motor using Joystick in Arduino. I am working on this project for a manual controlled Camera slider. In future, I will also update this code for Manual camera slider but this is very simple for everyone which everyone can make their joystick control stepper for creative projects.

So in this blog, we take a look on these steps are:-

>> How Unipolar Stepper Motor Works

>>Component Required

>>Schematic

>>Arduino Code

>>Final

How Unipolar Stepper Motor Works

If we look into Steppers, there are two types stepper motor which one is Unipolar and second one is Bipolar. The Bipolar Stepper motor is 2 phase brushless dc motor which has two copper winding (coils) each coil has 2 wires other the main is Unipolar stepper motor, It has 4 phase brushless dc motor which has 5 to 6 wires (in my case I am using 5 wire stepper motor which is most popular Unipolar one). It can be controlled with two most common modes, first one is Full Step, and Second one is Half step and also an another type which is Microstepping mode.

In Full Step mode the driver power the two coils at same time which this mode provides the powerful torque.

Where Half Step mode is a complete combination of the two Full Step mode which this mode provide more accuracy using dividing each steps by 2.

The last one is Microstepping which this mode more accurate than the half step mode.

Component Required:-

1x Arduino Nano

2x ULN2003 Stepper Motor Driver IC (Unipolar Stepper Motor can be drive by lots of motor driver but the most popular and cheap one is this ULN2003 IC)

2x Stepper Motor (5 pin)

1x Joystick

Some Jumper Wires

Schematic:-

This one is super simple schematic where you can build into your breadboard.

 

First of all place the all required components in breadboard.

Then connect Arduino Digital Pin D2 to IC1 pin 1.

After then connect the Digital Pin D3 to IC1 pin 2.

After then connect the Digital Pin D4 to IC1 pin 3.

After then connect the Digital Pin D5 to IC1 pin 4.

Connect the ULN2003 Pin 9 to 12V Positive pin and Pin 8 to main GND (Negative) Pin.

Then connect Arduino Digital Pin D8 to IC2 pin 1.

After then connect the Digital Pin D9 to IC2 pin 2.

After then connect the Digital Pin D10 to IC2 pin 3.

After then connect the Digital Pin D11 to IC2 pin 4.

Same again connect the ULN2003 Pin 9 to 12V Positive pin and Pin 8 to main GND (Negative) Pin.

Now Connect the joystick Pins, First one is GND which always connect to main ground pin then second one is 5V+ which connect Arduino 5V(VCC) then the third one is VRx which is connect with A2 and the last one is VRy which is connect with A1 Analog pin.

Arduino Code:-

Here is the simple Arduino code for this project, now you can copy this code and paste into your Arduino IDE.

#include <Stepper.h>
#define STEPS 2038 
Stepper stepper(STEPS, 8, 10, 9, 11);
Stepper stepper1(2038, 2, 4, 3, 5);
int potState = 0;
int pot1State = 0;
void setup() {
  Serial.begin(9600);
}
void loop() {
  potState = analogRead(A1); //reads the values from the Joystick
  pot1State = analogRead(A2); 

  Serial.println(pot1State); // Serial Data Reading
  Serial.println("\t");
  Serial.println(potState); 

  stepper.setSpeed(5);
  stepper1.setSpeed(5);

  if (potState > 600) { // main code here
    stepper.step(10);
  }

  if (potState < 400) {
    stepper.step(-10);
  }

  if (pot1State < 400) {
    stepper1.step(-10);
    delay(5);
  }
  if (pot1State > 600) {
    stepper1.step(10);
  }

}

Final 
In my opinion, this project can be modify for 2-3 more stepper motor and 1-2 more
joystick where we can create a Robotic Arm but the less pins in Arduino Uno or
Nano it can be a subject for another post which we can use pin expender.