We have been messing about with a ChipKit and stepper motors from floppy drives and it has been very interesting. Only problem is we cannot find a project for them. The torque generated is very low so they cant really do any work. The best idea so far has been to stick a Christmas decoration on top but that seems a little, er, unimaginative! Any suggestions would be great.
If you are interested you may want to have a look at these resources:
http://www.stepperworld.com/Tutorials/pgUnipolarTutorial.htm
http://www.rapidonline.com/pdf/82-0192.pdf – for home built motor controllers
http://www.horrorseek.com/home/halloween/wolfstone/Motors/stpint_StepperMotorIntro.html
http://www.solarbotics.net/library/pieces/parts_mech_steppers.html
We built an ugly as sin home built motor controller shield with a L293 chip which works ok but gets really hot after a while. If we find a project for this we may utilise something a little more elegant. Either that or a bunch of equally poorly soldered transistors!