Turn off stepper motors for heat?

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kifling
 
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Turn off stepper motors for heat?

Post by kifling »

I've got a small project, where I am using some stepper motors to perform a function once or twice a day. However, the power is constant and very hot. Seems unneccesary. Is there a way to turn off power to the steppermotor when it's idle? I've got an adafruit motor shield, so using the motorsheild library.

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adafruit_support_bill
 
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Re: Turn off stepper motors for heat?

Post by adafruit_support_bill »

You can call the "release()" function to turn off holding current to the motor.

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kifling
 
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Re: Turn off stepper motors for heat?

Post by kifling »

Thank you. A bit of a clarification.

I currently call the steppers
myMotorRight
and
myMotorLeft

I call them this way

myMotorRight->step(1, BACKWARD, SINGLE);

I'm not quite sure how to invoke the release. Looking online, I see that it might be

myMotorLeft.release();
myMotorRight.release();

but that comes up with an error suggesting

myMotorLeft->release();
myMotorRight->release();

Is this correct?

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adafruit_support_bill
 
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Re: Turn off stepper motors for heat?

Post by adafruit_support_bill »

When using the V2 motor shield library, the 'motors' in your code are actually pointers to motor objects.
Since they are pointers, you need to use the '->' instead of the '.'

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kifling
 
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Re: Turn off stepper motors for heat?

Post by kifling »

thanks so much.

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