DRV8825 Stepper Motor Driver Carrier, High Current

This version of the DRV8825 Stepper Motor Driver Carrier ships with 0.1″-pitch male header pins installed as shown in the main product picture, so no soldering is required to use it with an appropriate 16-pin socket or solderless breadboard. This product is a carrier board or breakout board for TI’s DRV8825 stepper motor driver; we therefore recommend careful reading of the DRV8825 datasheet (1MB pdf) before using this product. This stepper motor driver lets you control one bipolar stepper motor at up to 2.2 A output current per coil (see the Power Dissipation Considerations section below for more information). Here are some of the driver’s key features:

• Simple step and direction control interface
• Six different step resolutions: full-step, half-step, 1/4-step, 1/8-step, 1/16-step, and 1/32-step
• Adjustable current control lets you set the maximum current output with a potentiometer, which lets you use voltages above your stepper motor’s rated voltage to achieve higher step rates
• Intelligent chopping control that automatically selects the correct current decay mode (fast decay or slow decay)
• 45 V maximum supply voltage
• Built-in regulator (no external logic voltage supply needed)
• Can interface directly with 3.3 V and 5 V systems
• Over-temperature thermal shutdown, over-current shutdown, and under-voltage lockout
• Short-to-ground and shorted-load protection
• 4-layer, 2 oz copper PCB for improved heat dissipation
• Exposed solderable ground pad below the driver IC on the bottom of the PCB

Using the driver

Minimal wiring diagram for connecting a microcontroller to a DRV8824/DRV8825 stepper motor driver carrier (full-step mode).

Power connections

The driver requires a motor supply voltage of 8.2 – 45 V to be connected across VMOT and GND. This supply should have appropriate decoupling capacitors close to the board, and it should be capable of delivering the expected stepper motor current.

Motor connections

Four, six, and eight-wire stepper motors can be driven by the DRV8825 if they are properly connected; a FAQ answer explains the proper wiring in detail.

Step (and microstep) size

Stepper motors typically have a step size specification (e.g. 1.8° or 200 steps per revolution), which applies to full steps. A microstepping driver such as the DRV8825 allows higher resolutions by allowing intermediate step locations, which are achieved by energizing the coils with intermediate current levels. For instance, driving a motor in quarter-step mode will give the 200-step-per-revolution motor 800 microsteps per revolution by using four different current levels.

The resolution (step size) selector inputs (MODE0, MODE1, and MODE2) enable selection from the six step resolutions according to the table below. All three selector inputs have internal 100kΩ pull-down resistors, so leaving these three microstep selection pins disconnected results in full-step mode. For the microstep modes to function correctly, the current limit must be set low enough (see below) so that current limiting gets engaged. Otherwise, the intermediate current levels will not be correctly maintained, and the motor will skip microsteps.

Control inputs

Each pulse to the STEP input corresponds to one microstep of the stepper motor in the direction selected by the DIR pin. These inputs are both pulled low by default through internal 100kΩ pull-down resistors. If you just want rotation in a single direction, you can leave DIR disconnected.

The chip has three different inputs for controlling its power states: RESET, SLEEP, and ENBL. For details about these power states, see the datasheet. Please note that the driver pulls the SLEEP pin low through an internal 1MΩ pull-down resistor, and it pulls the RESET and ENBL pins low through internal 100kΩ pull-down resistors. These default RESET and SLEEP states are ones that prevent the driver from operating; both of these pins must be high to enable the driver (they can be connected directly to a logic “high” voltage between 2.2 and 5.25 V, or they can be dynamically controlled via connections to digital outputs of an MCU). The default state of the ENBL pin is to enable the driver, so this pin can be left disconnected.

The DRV8825 also features a FAULT output that drives low whenever the H-bridge FETs are disabled as the result of over-current protection or thermal shutdown. The carrier board connects this pin to the SLEEP pin through a 10k resistor that acts as a FAULT pull-up whenever SLEEP is externally held high, so no external pull-up is necessary on the FAULT pin. Note that the carrier includes a 1.5k protection resistor in series with the FAULT pin that makes it is safe to connect this pin directly to a logic voltage supply, as might happen if you use this board in a system designed for the pin-compatible A4988 carrier. In such a system, the 10k resistor between SLEEP and FAULT would then act as a pull-up for SLEEP, making the DRV8825 carrier more of a direct replacement for the A4988 in such systems (the A4988 has an internal pull-up on its SLEEP pin). To keep faults from pulling down the SLEEP pin, any external pull-up resistor you add to the SLEEP pin input should not exceed 4.7k.

Current limiting

To achieve high step rates, the motor supply is typically much higher than would be permissible without active current limiting. For instance, a typical stepper motor might have a maximum current rating of 1 A with a 5Ω coil resistance, which would indicate a maximum motor supply of 5 V. Using such a motor with 12 V would allow higher step rates, but the current must actively be limited to under 1 A to prevent damage to the motor.

The DRV8825 supports such active current limiting, and the trimmer potentiometer on the board can be used to set the current limit. You will typically want to set the driver’s current limit to be at or below the current rating of your stepper motor. One way to set the current limit is to put the driver into full-step mode and to measure the current running through a single motor coil without clocking the STEP input. The measured current will be 0.7 times the current limit (since both coils are always on and limited to approximately 70% of the current limit setting in full-step mode).

Another way to set the current limit is to measure the voltage on the “ref” pin and to calculate the resulting current limit (the current sense resistors are 0.100Ω). The ref pin voltage is accessible on a via that is circled on the bottom silkscreen of the circuit board. The current limit relates to the reference voltage as follows:

Current Limit = VREF × 2

So, for example, if you have a stepper motor rated for 1 A, you can set the current limit to 1 A by setting the reference voltage to 0.5 V.

Note: The coil current can be very different from the power supply current, so you should not use the current measured at the power supply to set the current limit. The appropriate place to put your current meter is in series with one of your stepper motor coils.

Power dissipation considerations

The DRV8825 driver IC has a maximum current rating of 2.5 A per coil, but the current sense resistors further limit the maximum current to 2.2 A, and the actual current you can deliver depends on how well you can keep the IC cool. The carrier’s printed circuit board is designed to draw heat out of the IC, but to supply more than approximately 1.5 A per coil, a heat sink or other cooling method is required.

This product can get hot enough to burn you long before the chip overheats. Take care when handling this product and other components connected to it.

Please note that measuring the current draw at the power supply will generally not provide an accurate measure of the coil current. Since the input voltage to the driver can be significantly higher than the coil voltage, the measured current on the power supply can be quite a bit lower than the coil current (the driver and coil basically act like a switching step-down power supply). Also, if the supply voltage is very high compared to what the motor needs to achieve the set current, the duty cycle will be very low, which also leads to significant differences between average and RMS currents. Additionally, please note that the coil current is a function of the set current limit, but it does not necessarily equal the current limit setting. The actual current through each coil changes with each microstep. See the DRV8825 datasheet for more information.

Schematic diagram

Schematic diagram for the DRV8824/DRV8825 stepper motor driver carrier.

The current sense resistors (R2 and R3) on the DRV8825 carrier are 0.100 Ω. This schematic is also available as a downloadable pdf (196k pdf).