Controlling many (72) stepper motors

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cragganmore
 
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Controlling many (72) stepper motors

Post by cragganmore »

I'm working on a project where I need to be able to control 72 stepper motors. The motors are here: http://www.aliexpress.com/item/Miniatur ... 35929.html

Could anyone give me some advice on how I might control this many motors? I'm open to Arduino or Raspberry Pi.

For reference, not all the motors will be simultaneously active. At most, 8 would be triggering at the same time.

Thanks in advance for any thoughts or guidance.

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adafruit_support_bill
 
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Re: Controlling many (72) stepper motors

Post by adafruit_support_bill »

The Adafruit V2 motor shield can control 2 steppers per shield and can be stacked to control up to 64 with a single Arduino. Although the i2c bandwidth would seriously limit the rate at which you could step them simultaneously.

In any case, you could use multiple Arduinos controlling groups of motors and have a "master" processor coordinate them.

https://learn.adafruit.com/system/produ ... 1396717795

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