Empower Your Instrument with Stepper Motor Control

Mosaic’s tiny instrument controller, the QCard packs a programmable computer, up to 1 megabyte of memory, communications, analog and digital I/O, and an expansion I/O bus on a 2x2.5 low-cost board. On-board I/O includes 8 digital I/O lines with counter/timer capabilities, 8 analog inputs, a fast synchronous SPI serial interface, and dual RS232/485 serial ports. An optional real-time clock tracks the calendar and time of day and battery-backs the 128K RAM.

Plugged directly onto the QCard is the Power I/O Wildcard. This heavy-duty module provides eight high-current outputs and four high-voltage digital inputs. Inputs and outputs are optically isolated to ±2500 volts. The Power I/O Wildcard controls four phase, unipolar, permanent magnet stepper motors. Included in the kit is a standard size, 200-steps-per-revolution, NEMA 17 (1.7 in. square footprint, 5 mm shaft diameter), 12 V stepper motor. This sized motor is commonly used in household appliances, lab equipment, stage lighting devices, and in various industrial control applications.

The software package provided with the kit makes it easy to manage ramping, speed and step control of the stepper motor. Pre-coded library routines enable the user to specify starting/jogging speeds, as well as acceleration and deceleration rates for the stepper motor. Simple functions can be called on to specify speed, change speed and define the number of steps to be taken. The ramp-up, steady speed and ramp-down profiles are generated for you, and a 32-bit step counter is automatically updated for use by your application program.

Now you can add integrated stepper motor control to your instrument while taking advantage of the QCard’s versatile analog and digital I/O and user-friendly operator interface. The Kit is competitively priced at $299 (without the stepper motor) or $339.00 (with the stepper motor included).