Stepper Motor Reference

A 4-wire bipolar stepper motor with two coils (A and B), driven through a stepper driver board (e.g. ULN2003 or L298N) — not directly from GPIO pins.

Pin names

Attributes

This component has no configurable attributes.

Usage

Connect the four coil terminals to a stepper driver board's outputs, and the driver's control inputs to four Arduino digital pins. Drive it with the built-in Stepper library.

#include <Stepper.h>

const int STEPS_PER_REV = 2048; // typical for a 28BYJ-48 + ULN2003 driver

// Driver input pins, in the order the library expects
Stepper motor(STEPS_PER_REV, 8, 10, 9, 11);

void setup() {
  motor.setSpeed(10); // RPM
}

void loop() {
  motor.step(STEPS_PER_REV / 4); // quarter turn clockwise
  delay(1000);
  motor.step(-STEPS_PER_REV / 4); // quarter turn counter-clockwise
  delay(1000);
}

Steppers draw more current than a GPIO pin can safely supply — always drive them through a dedicated driver board, never wire the coils directly to the Arduino.

Examples

See also

• Biaxial Stepper — two of these motors combined for 2-axis motion (e.g. CNC/plotter)
• Servo Motor — simpler absolute-angle alternative for single-axis positioning