Wednesday 4 May 2011

Trinamic Stepper Driver, and Arduino and I2C

I'm trying to work my way through communicating with a Trinamic TMC223 stepper driver from an Arduino via the I2C interface. I've not managed to find a single source of info to get me going.

I've previously used I2C to talk to some SHT temp/humidity sensors but I've not managed to simplify that enough to convert to a more generic framework.

There is some sample C code for the chips on the Trinamic web site at http://www.trinamic.com/tmc/media/Downloads/integrated_circuits/Tmc222/Application_notes/TMC222_Lib_AVR.zip

An interesting intro to I2C on the Arduino at http://tronixstuff.wordpress.com/2010/10/20/tutorial-arduino-and-the-i2c-bus/

Some sample code for I2C which I've managed to compile on the Arduino platform at http://www.arduino.cc/cgi-bin/yabb2/YaBB.pl?num=1265556313

I've also found alternatives to the wires library at http://www.adafruit.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=25&t=13722

I'm hoping to develop a library or sketch to do the basics with the chip.

Monday 2 May 2011

Recent activity

No posts for a while. I've been getting an old desktop PC rebuilt for shed usage to replace the even older laptop I'd been using. I'd been trying to do it with Ubuntu and EMC2 but was unable to get all axis of the mill working under EMC2 and had a few other concerns so I'm running XP here and Mach3. I've got a couple of other old PC's around (donated by a friend) so I may set one of them up with Ubuntu and try again.

Tonight I've been having another go at surface mount soldering an TMC223 IC to a breakout board. Second attempt and I think it's worked this time. The next step will be to add some support components to a board then try and get the chip running of an Arduino. I2C interface to this stepper driver with built in stall detection etc so it's an interesting option  for positional control of stepper motors rather than the traditional step/dir signals.


I've also been playing a little more with trying to talk to an arduino via bluetooth, still no success there but I've not given up yet.

Bob