Conclusion

This application note described how to drive a Switec stepper motor as a metronome, using a circuit composed entirely of CIPs. The implementation was presented gradually, starting from driving the motor in one direction, up to controlling the direction of rotation and the number of steps to run.

There are plenty of advantages in using CIPs for this particular implementation, as well as for driving a stepper motor in different applications, such as little usage of data and program memory, minimal computation done by the core, and minimal implication of software.

Thanks to the reduced core load and the free memory space, the application can easily be further developed. Also, other motors can be used, depending on the number of the contacts and their physical characteristics.

The implementation can be ported to other microcontrollers, but the new device needs to contain the CIPs used in the current application.