BlueSteps: A Bluetooth Based Stepper Motor Control System

Ifrah Jaffri^1, , Zeeshan Nafees¹, Shoaib Zaidi¹ and Oliver Faust²

¹School of Science and Engineering, Habib University, Karachi, Pakistan

²Electrical, Electronic Control Engineering, Sheffield Hallam University, Sheffield, England, UK

Cite this paper:
Ifrah Jaffri, Zeeshan Nafees, Shoaib Zaidi and Oliver Faust. BlueSteps: A Bluetooth Based Stepper Motor Control System. Journal of Embedded Systems. 2015; 3(1):21-27. doi: 10.12691/jes-3-1-4

Abstract

Wireless systems are widely used as a networking technology for the Internet of Things (IOT). Although they were initially designed for voice communication systems, they can be used to exchange control commands and data between machines. In this paper, we present the BlueSteps system which gives a user wireless control over stepper motors. The BlueSteps hardware incorporates a Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) coupled to a Bluetooth module and a custom build driver circuit. The FPGA hosts a micro-controller and the control logic for the stepper motors. The Bluetooth module establishes a wireless connection between a mobile device and the micro-controller. Apart from the general systems design, we also conceived the User Interface (UI) software and a driver circuit for the stepper motors. The combination of custom software and custom hardware gave us the flexibility to create a versatile wireless stepper motor control system, which can be used in a wide range of applications.

Keywords:
stepper motors bluetooth field programmable gate array remote control custom intellectual property cores custom driver circuit

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

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