IoT Pi Microscope: driver board

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1

Hi,

I’m starting out on my first project, a microscope with various 3D printed body parts and a stepper motor, driver and Raspberry Pi board and associated 8MP camera.
This is the link to the microscope on Thingiverse. Unfortunately the parts list and instructions are not exactly comprehensive but I’ve been able to figure out most of it.
https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1666077

I want to use a Small Reduction Stepper Motor - 5VDC - this will fit the 3D printed housing and will move the microscope in the Z-axis. I believe the driver board they are using for it is the Adafruit DC & Stepper Motor HAT for Raspberry Pi - Mini Kit.

My question/problem is: I don’t have much clue about electronics and/or soldering nor do I own a soldering iron. Can I use a different driver board that doesn’t require soldering i.e. ‘plug-and-play’ that will work with the above stepper motor? It doesn’t necessarily have be HAT but I suppose it would be neater.

Any advice is greatly appreciated.
Cheers,
Ric.

2

You could replace the motor driver board with this fully assembled bonnet:

3

Hi Robin,

Thanks heaps for your suggestion, I’ll give the bonnet a go. I’m assuming from the description that the bonnet plugs directly into the Pi and therefore no other cables are required between the two?

4

Adafruit basically took Adafruit’s super-popular DC+Stepper Motor HAT and squeezed it down and made it fully assembled - plug and play ready to go, no soldering required!

That’s taken directly from the product description linked above. So no cables required to connect to the RPi, and screw terminals to connect to the motors. May require stripping the insulation from the motor leads. A sharp craft knife could be used (with caution)
if you don’t have wire strippers.