My 2DOF with stepper motors

Wow, fantastic work here! Thank you so much for sharing your stepper motor code, I'm seriously interested in using it to try making a gseat, but I'm a complete beginner at everything here on xsimulator. I'm just trying to learn as fast as possible. .
Could I ask what was your reason for deciding to go with the 350W DC motor for the seatbelt tension instead of another stepper motor?

First I bought this motor to build a mmos steering wheel. I did let go this idea. So I had this motor lying around ready to be used...
Now the main reason you don't want to use a stepper motor to build a seatbelt is the stepper motor won't like to fail to reach a position. Depending on the stepper behaviour it will likely stop moving, go into safe mode, miss steps etc... The DC motor won't care (even if it makes a noise like it doesn't like to not move)...

On top of that it's not natural to use a stepper... How will you drive it ? The more you brake, further the motor should turn ?
With the dc motor it's easy, the more you brake, the more current goes into the motor, the more the belt is pulled...

BTW : the motor is too strong for its purpose... I am not sure but in Simhub we put around 50% power..
Then in idle state (when you don't brake), there always was around 5% power (through a simple potentiometer) so the belt was auto adjusting, very usefull for the drivers shift. The problem is that IMO you are consumming power all the time... that's not very economic considering we made a 24H race... Next time I will add a spring system to have the auto-adjust feature.

Hey @Lebois

Thank you for your input.
I cannot see a feedback for your seat belt tensioner. How is the setup? Maybe you can help me here.
My.srAr

Hi ! Why do you mean by feedback ? How it goes back in place ?

I mean how does the Controller know where the Motor is, and how much to turn. Potentiometer, Encoder... such a thing

It's driven with torque.

It doesn't know where the seatbelt is, but it doesn't need to because the seat belt is meant to be already closed to you. When it stops pushing, the seatbelt comes naturally back in place.

Thanks @Lebois for this project .. am a new here and i need to build my own simulator with stepper.. i need the final working code from you and wiring between motors and driver and Arduino,, and simtools setting ..


Thanks in advance ..

The code is in the first page and you will found the wiring in it :
int const StepPin1 = 2, DirPin1 = 3, StepPin2 = 4, DirPin2 = 5; //Step or pulse pin

Then nothing special. You should find the driver's wiring diagram on the manufacturer's side.
I added the simtools settings in attachment in the first post.

I won't detail more this project because I work on another motion rig that will be much more advanced.
Otherwise :
1) Anyway, you need to understand how everything work. You won't have anything moving if you don't understand the simtools settings, the arduino baseline code, the way a stepper motor is driven.
2) You should try to make simple code work before trying the whole one. Try a communication code, a moving code, etc.
3) Use reliable connectors to do the testings. I wasted too much time working with messed wires.
4) The code should be working as it, but check if the Simtools "output - range" match the arduino "max pitch, max roll", and driver microstepping settings. 10 bits = 2^10 = 0 to 1023

Thanks for quick replying ..
first i will use small stepper motor to test first before buying a bigger one to reduce the cost
how many wires comes form your stepper motor ? and the motion is smoothing at the final ?

I also forgot to say that you can ask everything you want ^^.

I think there is 4 to the stepper driver for power supply. And 6 for the position encoder.

Yeah quite smooth. Very detailed. There problem is that there is a lot of play in the pivot, so you loose a lot of details... I am planning to upgrade to a 3 DOf, so no pivot, and no play.

you mean 2 and 3 for each motor ? that is right ?

2 and 3 what ?

wires comes out from the motor ?

http://www.astrosurf.com/jd85/ESA/HBS-90-8.2.PDF

1 A+ O Motor Phase A+
2 A- O Motor Phase A
3 B+ O Motor Phase B+
4 B- O Motor Phase B


1 EB+ I Encoder channel B+ input
2 EB- I Encoder channel B- input
3 EA+ I Encoder channel A+ input
4 EA- I Encoder channel A- input
5 VCC O +5V @ 100 mAmax.
6 EGND GND Signal ground

Guess you is back....in 3 DOF !!!

Nice setup, congrats on such a nice work.
What encoders did you use for the 2DOF rig?

the encoders are integrated into the stepper motors. I will soon release the tutorial to build my stepper-based actuators.

Hi @Lebois
I am using hybrid steppers in a 6 motor g-seat/seatbelt design im building. I found in testing that those hybrid stepper drivers are not great as they will alert you that the driver missed steps but will do nothing to compensate for them so will still run out of position. I found that using the encoder to read the actuator position back to the arduino was the way forward. I use the quadrature encoder library for the arduino to read the position of the motors as it uses interrupts to catch the encoder pulses so it doesn't miss any. Each arduino can read 2 encoders but i use 1 nano per motor due to high rpm at 36v. I use a stm32 microcontroller at 128mhz as a master interface and read the data from each nano and send the data to the master using spi at high speed. The master can then detect if the current actuator position is at the target position and if not control the stepping to suit the distance from target. I use full steps to move the motors fast then micro stepping when within a few steps to stop the motor exactly on the target. In all the testing i have done i cant make it miss steps or run out of position as it will keep stepping until it reaches the target rather than sending a set amount of pulses and hope it gets to the target. I think that is how closed loop motor control should be. This may help if your thinking of building stepper motor actuators buddy.

Wow that sound great ! I think that the driver is in alert if there is too many missing steps.
Your electronic is great, otherwise it requires more electronic skill. I want to share my project so people can build it, so things must keep simple...

but I would be interested to take a look at your code ;-)