Group assignment

Measure the power consumption of an output device. Document your work (in a group or individually).


Measuring power consumption of a stepper motor

Because we will need a stepper motor for the group machine, we decided to measure the power consumption of a Nema 17 bipolar motor.

measure amps in a stepper motor

Wiring and code

We connected the stepper motor to a driver and an Arduino Leonardo. The driver is a BigEasyDriver and the most basic configuration was used for the test.

The wiring of the motor was setup as shown in the image:

measure amps in a stepper motor

The code is also very simple, it just spins the motor in one direction.

void setup()
{
pinMode(8, OUTPUT);
pinMode(9, OUTPUT);
digitalWrite(8, LOW);
digitalWrite(9, LOW);
}

void loop()
{
digitalWrite(9, HIGH);
delay(1);
digitalWrite(9, LOW);
delay(1);
}

Tester

measure amps in a stepper motor

The measured current was 1,924 A. And the power source is 12 V.

Power formula is W = I x V.

P = 1.924 A x 12 V

P = 23,088 W