Writing my own code for driving a stepper motor. Understanding some syntax

[werto165]

I want to be able to drive a bipolar stepper with a l2393d 

I also want to use the stepper library build into the arduino IDE(I think) 

 

However I don't want the function to be blocking so I want to be able to interface with the arduino whilst steps are occuring. I was just looking into the stepper.cpp files and I am a little confused with the follow syntax: 

 

void Stepper::setSpeed(long whatSpeed)
{
  this->step_delay = 60L * 1000L * 1000L / this->number_of_steps / whatSpeed;
}

 

to drive the stepper motor there needs to be a certain stepper delay (as far as I know) so I was just wondering if someone could explain the this-> syntax to me as I am not familiar with it. 

 

  if (this->pin_count == 4) {
    switch (thisStep) {
      case 0:  // 1010
        digitalWrite(motor_pin_1, HIGH);
        digitalWrite(motor_pin_2, LOW);
        digitalWrite(motor_pin_3, HIGH);
        digitalWrite(motor_pin_4, LOW);
      break;
      case 1:  // 0110
        digitalWrite(motor_pin_1, LOW);
        digitalWrite(motor_pin_2, HIGH);
        digitalWrite(motor_pin_3, HIGH);
        digitalWrite(motor_pin_4, LOW);
      break;
      case 2:  //0101
        digitalWrite(motor_pin_1, LOW);
        digitalWrite(motor_pin_2, HIGH);
        digitalWrite(motor_pin_3, LOW);
        digitalWrite(motor_pin_4, HIGH);
      break;
      case 3:  //1001
        digitalWrite(motor_pin_1, HIGH);
        digitalWrite(motor_pin_2, LOW);
        digitalWrite(motor_pin_3, LOW);
        digitalWrite(motor_pin_4, HIGH);
      break;
    }
  }

 

this is the sequence to make the stepper motor "step" 

 

so I what also I'd like to know if you do a delay say every 20ms would that produce a similar control?

 

in the header file it references this too: 

 

 unsigned long step_delay; // delay between steps, in ms, based on speed

 

Thanks 

 

 

[Unimportant]

3 hours ago, werto165 said:

I was just wondering if someone could explain the this-> syntax

C++ supports object oriented programming (OOP). In OOP one can define custom datatypes, called classes. A class groups data (member variables) and functions that perform operations on said data (member functions / methods) together. "this" is a pointer that points to the class instance for which the function was called. 

[Lamez]

I am not 100% what you are going for, but I have a "Tone" library someone wrote and open sourced for generating frequencies and is non-blocking. I had to make some corrections to the library and added support for the mega 2560, but that portion of the library is now proprietary with my company and I cannot share the corrections I made, however I think I might be able to dig up the library files from the net, or I can look on my work computer, come Monday morning.