Wireless Stepper Motor Control using RF-Communication

Stepper motors finds lot applications in PC peripherals, business machines, process control, machine apparatuses, and mechanical tools and robotics. Especially in robotics and process control like silicon handling, I.C Bonding, and Laser managing applications, it is important to control the stepper engine from remote spots. This projects is to control the stepper engine from a remote spot utilizing RF modules. This deals with the design and development of hardware and software for wireless control of stepper motor. Three switches are used to control the direction/ speed of the steeper motor at the transmitter side. The status of these switches is transmitting using RF transmitter and received by the receiver. The microcontroller at the receiver will be continuously monitored the status of the switches received from the decoder and perform the corresponding actions. The RF modules used here are STT-433 MHz Transmitter, STR-433 MHz Receiver, HT640 RF Encoder, and HT648 RF Decoder. The three switches interfaced with the RF transmitter through RF Encoder. The encoder continuously reads the status of the switches, passes the data to the RF transmitter and the transmitter transmits data. At the receiving end, the RF receiver receives this data, gives it to RF decoder. This decoder converts the single bit data into 8-bit data and presents it to the microcontroller. Now, it is the job of the controller to read the data and perform the corresponding action i.e., to rotate the stepper motor clockwise, anticlockwise or entirely stop it. 16 × 2 Liquid Crystal display (LCD) is provided at the receiver side to display the status of the stepper motor. ULN driver is used to drive the stepper motor. This project uses regulated 5V, 500mA power supply. 7805 three terminal voltage regulator is used for voltage regulation. Bridge type full wave rectifier is used to rectify the ac output of secondary of 230/12V step down transformer. The power supply consists of a step down transformer 230/12V, which steps down the voltage to 12V AC. This is converted to DC using a Bridge rectifier and it is then regulated to +5V using a voltage regulator 7805 which is required for the operation of the microcontroller and other components