TMC2209 stepper motor driver board testing 🤖⚙️🔋
We've been testing the Trinamic/Maxim/Analog/WeylandYutani TMC2209 (https://www.digikey.com/short/8r5m38h8) breakout we designed, and it's working great - the step/dir interface plus the micro-step select allows a microcontroller to control a stepper with just GPIO and true-to-its-name it is a very silent stepper driver, much quieter than the A4988 (https://www.digikey.com/short/tfjt88dd)! There are a few different I/O pins on the TMC: Index tells you when a full step is completed, which is handy to know when you want to change stepper modes on the fly. Diag lets you know when a power or motor failure has occurred. It can also tell when the motor has stalled if it's configured to. Finally, and most interestingly, is the UART interface: this unidirectional pin lets you read and write configuration registers, set 1-128 microsteps, change current limiting, and detect stalls for 'auto homing'. So far, everything works; we're just going to swap the direction of the potentiometer so it twists clockwise to increase the current limit and book PCBs!
