You can turn off the power when you're not moving it, assuming it doesn't need to hold anything in its place (like in this application).
E.g. https://www.allegromicro.com/-/media/files/datasheets/a5984-... describes how its current control in general works for this stepper motor driver in page 9 (certainly not using the same current always) and in page 12 how to use its ENABLE signal to control FETs and SLEEP to further reduce power usage.
> I much prefer reading something that is imperfect but written by a human to something auto-generated. That feels as if we someone would say "I'm busy, talk to my agent instead."
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Section 2 has the words "Mars Science Laboratory" (the official name of the Curiosity Rover) printed vertically to the right for no discernible reason.
It's almost as if this were a patchwork of content from multiple sources, maybe glued together by an LLM.
It's hosted on a free hosting platform with no chain of custody. The author is only known as "Tamerlan". Why wouldn't an engineer have their own blog for a project like this?
> The Pi Board is an advanced automated chess system powered by a Raspberry Pi, utilizing an XY stepper motor mechanism and magnets to move chess pieces seamlessly across the board. The development process involved several key stages, including precise calibration of stepper motor coordinates, calculating the weight of each piece for accurate handling, integrating a robust chess engine, and optimizing piece-grabbing strategies and movement detection. Special attention was given to selecting the most efficient algorithm to minimize the stepper motors' power consumption.
Is there a reason for the marketing speech? I'm assuming most people interested in this would rather read engineering speech, like so:
> The Pi Board, as the name suggests, uses a Raspberry Pi under the hood to calculate engine moves from <Stockfish? Leela Zero?>, and move the pieces with a series of stepper motors and magnets. We spent a significant amount of effort minimizing power consumption, including weighing the individual pieces to get more efficient grabbing and moving motions for each one.