4-5 stepper motors with motor shield?

[gradeschool]

Hello all...

I'm still a newbie, but learning fast. I got my motor shield up and running, and successfully got 4 salvaged steppers tested and running (of course only two at a time).

Now I need to learn how to run 4 or 5 steppers simultaneously. I wonder- should I be looking into multiplexing or serial to parallel shifting to extend the resources of the motor shield/ Arduino?

Ultimately I will be using IR sensors on each of the motors as well. I wonder if I am going to run out of resources from the motor shield...

I also wonder if I will be able to use the AFMotor.h library- can I create 4-5 motor controls with AF_Stepper?

Any help greatly appreciated...

Thanks!

[adafruit]

you -could- use 4 stepper motors by cutting some traces and connecting two shields so that the 595's are in serial instead of parallel. however it would require a bit of hacking and a lot of modification of the motor library to support another 8 bit stepper-state variable

[gradeschool]

hmmmm...

I wonder- does it make more sense to try to control multiple steppers with multiple arduinos? i've got limited coding skills- seems like it may be easier for me to just wire up 2-3 arduinos (or boarduinos) - and get them to "talk" together... each arduino controlling 2 steppers...

what do you think?

g

[adafruit]

that would work just fine!
one trick you can use is connect all of the 'RX' (digital pin 1) lines together and also make sure they share ground. then if you plug in one to a computer USB port, they will all receive the same data

[gradeschool]

thanks!

i will let u know how it goes... i have alot more to figure out before i take the next step(s)... ha ha

g