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I'm trying to drive 16 of these little steppers on an Arduino Uno.
Each test driver uses 4 digital pins for control (2 for each coil) so that would be 64 pins I will need.
I'm thinking either getting something like this or 4 of these.
Would something like that work ? What's the most straight forward way to drive these on an Arduino Uno ?
If you need to drive all 16 simultaneously and independently, the Uno may not have enough capability to do it. Consider the worst-case number of motors and highest rate(s) you expect to drive at once, plus anything else you need the Uno doing at the same time. You might try a simple sketch to do all of these things (substituting LEDs for the motor drivers) at once, and use a scope to examine those LED output signals for the right frequency, wave-form, and lack of jitter. Without I/O expanders, you won't get to 16 motors' worth of outputs (unless you already have an I/O expander) but you might try doubling up on the existing output (use non-overlapping motor phases if you can).
If the Uno can manage that with clean outputs, you'll have a better idea whether it can manage the full load. If it doesn't, you may need to reconsider your choice of processor with respect to its clock-speed, both kinds of memory (depending on what you learned), number of outputs, possibly number of available timers and of interrupts.
