Motorshield stepper motor problem

[martinsiegrist]

Hello. I'm a beginner.

I have a Arduino NG and a Motorshield on top of it.

First problem is the reset button. Continuity check was successful but the motorshield reset button doesn't do anything.

Second problem is my stepper motor (28BYJ-48) which only vibrates but does not turn! It get's warm when there's no sketch running. The motorshield is powered with 9V DC and I probably didn't have the jumper in place in the beginning..... I do still have current on the 5 pins going to the stepper motor. As mentioned it just vibrates....

Thanks for helping

[martinsiegrist]

the stepper motor is wired based on this website here: http://www.adafruit.com/blog/2012/05/30 ... 4-gearing/

[adafruit_support_bill]

If you post clear photos of the front & back of the shield we'll take a look at the assembly & soldering.

[arctic_eddie]

Regarding motor temperature, my Adafruit stepper of similar size will become very hot. It's rated at 12V but even 9V will make it too hot to touch. The AFMotor library has a command to "release". This will turn off the H-bridge and cut current to the motor. It will also help to use the least amount of voltage on the motor to produce the required torque.

[martinsiegrist]

Here are two pictures:

[adafruit_support_bill]

The soldering looks good for the most part. The solder-side photo is a little fuzzy, but there are are a couple of suspicious joints on the M1-M2 end of the board. It looks like one leg of C4 doesn't have enough solder. One of the pins on the servo header appears that way too. I'm not sure if it is just a strange reflection, but some of the joints on the M1-M2 terminal block may not have wetted the pad sufficiently. Check against the examples here and touch them up if necessary: http://learn.adafruit.com/adafruit-guid ... n-problems

Post the code you are using. Remember that the gearing on these motors makes them turn very slowly. It takes 3072 steps for a single rotation. If you use the unmodified StepperTest example from the AF_Motor library, it will take more than 6 minutes to make a single revolution!

[martinsiegrist]

thanks for mentioning the slow speed of my steppers....

I checked the pins, re-soldered some and now it works!