My very first proof-of-concept for the claw machine ran on servos. The current claw machine uses stepper motors and for the longest time Iwanted to use these leftover servo motors in a project. A vending machine seemed like a good idea to match the mini arcades...

Honestly I was just messing around with this project and later carried away with the idea.

I read on the Arduino.cc site how adding the 'duino' suffex to things translates poorly in Italian.. but VenDuino just sounded good. Sorry in advance.

Controlling a slot machine that I purchased from eBay with an Arduino - mattgrogan/slotmachine. New stepper classes work. Arduino and Stepper Motor Hookup The hookup of the Arduino to the microstep driver module is illustrated here: Note that we are driving the negative inputs of the modules, instead of the positive ones. The positive inputs are all connected to the Arduino 5-volt output.

If you wish to copy the build shown in my video, you will need some things aside from a microcontroller. Here's a list of eveything else you may need.

Assembly	Item	Quantity	Description
Body	1	1	Laser cut wood Body
Electronics	2	4	Parallax Servo Motor, Continuous Rotation
	3	1	LED 5mm
	4	1	DC-DC Stepdown Converter
	5	4	16mm Momentary push button OR 1 rotary encoder
	6	1	Nokia 5110 LCD
	7	1	74HC4050N Logic Level converter
	8	1	BreadBoard
	9	1	12V 2A DC Power Supply (5.1 x2.2 mm barrel)
	10	1	5.1 x2.2 mm DC panel mount jack
	11	3	misc wire, 1ft 22-24 AWG
	12	1	12mm Power switch
	13	1	F/F Dupont Jumper Wires, 30cm, 0.10' pitch
	14	1	Male extra Long PCB headers, 0.10' pitch
	15	1	12V LED strip, 30cm

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Stepper Slot Machine Arduino Servo Motor

A Stepper Motor or a step motor is a brushless, synchronous motor, which divides a full rotation into a number of steps. Unlike a brushless DC motor, which rotates continuously when a fixed DC voltage is applied to it, a step motor rotates in discrete step angles.

The Stepper Motors therefore are manufactured with steps per revolution of 12, 24, 72, 144, 180, and 200, resulting in stepping angles of 30, 15, 5, 2.5, 2, and 1.8 degrees per step. The stepper motor can be controlled with or without feedback.

Imagine a motor on an RC airplane. The motor spins very fast in one direction or another. You can vary the speed with the amount of power given to the motor, but you cannot tell the propeller to stop at a specific position.

Now imagine a printer. There are lots of moving parts inside a printer, including motors. One such motor acts as the paper feed, spinning rollers that move the piece of paper as ink is being printed on it. This motor needs to be able to move the paper an exact distance to be able to print the next line of text or the next line of an image.

There is another motor attached to a threaded rod that moves the print head back and forth. Again, that threaded rod needs to be moved an exact amount to print one letter after another. This is where the stepper motors come in handy.

How a Stepper Motor Works?

A regular DC motor spins in only direction whereas a Stepper motor can spin in precise increments.

Stepper motors can turn an exact amount of degrees (or steps) as desired. This gives you total control over the motor, allowing you to move it to an exact location and hold that position. It does so by powering the coils inside the motor for very short periods of time. The disadvantage is that you have to power the motor all the time to keep it in the position that you desire.

All you need to know for now is that, to move a stepper motor, you tell it to move a certain number of steps in one direction or the other, and tell it the speed at which to step in that direction. There are numerous varieties of stepper motors. The methods described here can be used to infer how to use other motors and drivers which are not mentioned in this tutorial. However, it is always recommended that you consult the datasheets and guides of the motors and drivers specific to the models you have.

Components Required

Arduino Stepper Motor Code

You will need the following components −

1 × Arduino UNO board
1 × small bipolar stepper Motor as shown in the image given below
1 × LM298 driving IC

Procedure

Follow the circuit diagram and make the connections as shown in the image given below.

Sketch

Open the Arduino IDE software on your computer. Coding in the Arduino language will control your circuit. Open a new sketch File by clicking New.

Arduino Code

Code to Note

This program drives a unipolar or bipolar stepper motor. The motor is attached to digital pins 8 - 11 of Arduino.

Result

Free Slot Machine

The motor will take one revolution in one direction, then one revolution in the other direction.