E-Lab Digital Engineering, Inc.
EDE12400
Introduction
The EDE12400 Stepper Motor Control Module is built upon the L297/L298 chopper drive chipset manufactured
by ST-Microelectronics. Support circuitry is incorporated to provide a complete bipolar chopper stepper motor
interface. This datasheet may be used in conjunction with the L297 Datasheet, L298 Datasheet, and L297
Application Note for greater detail. These three documents are available from the E-Lab website
(www.elabinc.com), the St-Microelectronics website (www.st.com), or the E-Lab Datasheet CD. As illustrated in
Figure One, minimal external components are required to implement a full-featured chopper drive stepper
motor control system.
Operational Overview
The EDE12400 contains all necessary circuitry for controlling a bipolar stepper motor at coil currents up to 2
Amps. Full & half stepping, directional control, motor enable/disable, and automatic current regulation
provide a powerful, easy-to-use motion control system. The built-in chopper frequency generation and current
sensing circuitry drives the motor at a presettable coil current which is determined by the voltage fed to the
Vref input (pin 8).
Figure One: Standard Module Hookup
When connected as shown in Figure One, the EDE12400 module will operate the motor based upon the inputs
of the CLOCK, CW/CCW, HALF/FULL, and RESET pins. With the RESET pin high (its inactive state), a low-going
(+5V to 0V) pulse on the CLOCK input will cause the motor to rotate one step at the low-to-high transition of the
pulse. The CW/CCW pin determines the direction of shaft rotation. The HALF/FULL pin determines whether the
module uses a standard full-step drive sequence (providing a 1.8°/per step rotation on a 1.8°/per step motor)
or a half-step drive sequence (providing a 0.9°/per step rotation on a 1.8°/per step motor).
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