About two weeks ago, we designed a breakout for the A4988, and we’re still waiting for those prototype PCBs, but we’re not one to wait, because we think that the idea is a good one…so why not design another version? This time with the Trinamic TMC2209. This is a similar “Step & Dir” type driver, with a wide motor range of 4.75 – 28 Volts and separate 3~5V IO pin. It has a couple nifty upgrades, though: like a diagnostic error output, index out so you know if you dropped a microstep, OTP config memory, and a half-duplex UART pin that you can use to configure and read stats from the chip. We kept the direction/step LEDs and the current-limit-set potentiometer, changed a few pins around, and voila! What do you think?
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