Section 4: Understanding Trinamic Drivers

by Daniel Frenkel
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Let’s take some time to understand how Trinamic stepper drivers work and what makes then different than other drivers on the market.

Trinamic drivers need to be thought of in two separate parts: Setup and Control.

Using SPI or UART (depending on the model of driver you have), we have the ability to set dozens of different settings. Then we control the driver using the Step and Dir pin to make out motor turn.

Always try to think of Trinamic drivers as these two very different parts

  1. Setup
  2. Control

Let me give you an example of setup and control.

Let’s pretend you want to drive your car to the restaurant. What do you?

You get in your car and turn the engine on, that’s like enabling the motor driver.

Then you change the heat settings, maybe you make it hotter or colder.

Then you adjust the seat to make sure it feels comfortable and maybe adjust the radio and prepare for the drive.

Finally, you place the car into the reverse gear and press the pedal to drive backwards.

Then you place your car into drive gear and press the gas pedal to drive forward.

In this scenario you first setup the car by changing all the setting prior to driving. Then you placed it into gear and pressed the gas pedal to control it.

Trinamic drivers work in a similar way. We use UART or SPI to set different settings in the driver before we move it. We can set the current, stall value, and many more things using the TMCStepper library.

Then we pulse the STEP and DIR pin to get the motor to begin turning by using the FastAccelLibrary.

 

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