Nuts and Volts - September 2014

Step Stick

1. Each stepper motor is different. There are a ton of tutorials out there to figure out how to connect yours to a Step Stick, so wire your stepper motor appropriately.

2. I used a wall wart power adapter to provide motor power to the Step Stick. I basically spliced the wires from a wall wart into a female pin header connector. You could solder directly or use jumpers. It is better to give the Step Stick its own power and NOT draw it from the activity board. While you may get that configuration working, I found it to be a little buggy.

Note: If you are not comfortable or knowledgeable about splicing wires to anything, seek help from someone who does!

3. Wire the VCC for the board power for the Step Stick to a 5V supply from the activity board. Again, you could draw the power for the board from the motor power but I found that buggy, as well.

4. Wire pin 0 from the activity board to the step pin on the Step Stick.

5. The Step Stick also requires a few jumpers. You have to at least jumper reset and sleep, or it will not work at all. If you want any form of micro-stepping, then you would have to jumper MS1, 2, and 3 to HIGH.

Audio

1. I used a 1/8” to 1/4” cable to connect the audio output from the activity board to the guitar amplifier.

2. I put my animal scream on a mini-SD and plugged it into the SD reader on the activity board.

So that’s it — an overly complicated Monster in a Box project. It’s probably more of an exercise in using the activity board to control a myriad of effects than it is on how to most efficiently make a Halloween prop. If you are reading this magazine though, I’m guessing you appreciate overly complicated projects just like me. NV