run up to 10 stepper motors via arduino?

lumicon

hi, i'm thinking of realizing a kinetic sculpture, where i would need like 10 stepper motors which would simulate a 2d noise. is there a way to drive so many motors via arduino out of one processing script (simple noise for structure)?

jeremydouglass

@lumicon -- if you search this forum for "stepper"

• https://forum.processing.org/two/search?Search=stepper

...there are recent discussions of projects with 2 / 4 / 6 motors.

kfrajer

You will need either multiple ardunios or an arduino with more IO ports, like the Mega series. Check this post for example:

https://forum.arduino.cc/index.php?topic=146230.0

i'm thinking of realizing a kinetic sculpture

Can you provide more details about your project? How do you make a sculpture with arduinos and 2D noise?

Kf

lumicon

great, thank you! so i figured that the mega 2560 R3 has 15 PWM outputs, which i probably could use for that, or?

my next question would be; how to bring the 10 rotateY values to the 10 motors;

void draw() {
  count = 10;
  translate(width/2, height+20, -boxsize); 
  float boxH = (float)height/count; 

  pushMatrix();
    for (int i=0; i<count; i++) {
      translate(0, -boxH, 0);

      float angle = myNoise((float)i/20, (float)frameCount/100, 0) * TWO_PI; 
      pushMatrix();
        rotateY(angle); // these values via arduino...
        box(boxsize, -boxH, boxsize/10);
      popMatrix();
    }
  popMatrix();
}

..will be quite simple, just 10 turning boxes, ...more later