Interfacing stepper motor with pic microcontrollers

Here I am not going to discuss completely about how to interface the stepper motor to the pic microcontrollers but will be talking about the what IC is to be used for interfacing the stepper motor to the pic microcontrollers

ULN2003

There are plenty of stepper motor drivers out there in the market. All you need to do is run a google search or ask around. The problem is that the PIC MicroC can not sink or source more than 25mA of current if I remember correctly. Whereas your stepper motor windings would draw a lot more current.

Also, the inductive windings will create a back EMF when the winding is turned off, this large current will also damage the PIC. The ULN 2003 is a "Driver" IC which simply accepts a logic state from the PIC and routes the necessary amount of current to the stepper windings. It also prevents the winding back EMF from affecting the PIC, in a sense isolating the pic from the large inductive load of the SM winding.

I'm not saying ULN is the best solution, it's a possibility. there are drivers available specifically for stepper motor control. You can control direction as well as control if the movement will be a full-step or half-step.

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