Some words about Velleman K8096 step motor controller quality & usability

Soon as I bought an oscilloscope as immediately... 

So:

1. Full step mode instead of half step (programmers decided to simplify your task, though this controller scheme allows the use of half step mode). It's not good for a stepper motor, having an angular pitch of the rotor 1.8°.

2. Instability of the impulses frequency timings chip stepper motor driver. Now it is clear what sounded like a resonant overtone when a stepper motor was running.

Screenshot:

And YouTube video (http://youtu.be/VfF1O9GuClM)

I asked the techsupport Velleman to comment on this video and screenshot (on the Velleman support forum), but this request was ignored. So I had to comment myself.

Oscillogram surprised and strongly enough. Here is a constant rotational speed, which is periodically swinging up to +/-2% (you can see it on photo and on video). It can be assumed that this occurs at the data exchange time between the controller and the API DLL. This indicates that the controller has at least one problems, or a combination of some problems: lack of PIC processor computing power; poor quality of the firmware code; poor management/exchange protocol quality; poor implementation of the management protocol (firmware and API).

The conclusions:

1. K8096 controller is suitable for use only with the stepper motor having a large angular pitch of the rotor (5° or more).

2. Despite the relatively good circuitry of the controller, the efforts of the programmers who wrote the firmware for the controller, the controller has turned out to toy with very limited usability.

3. Velleman technical support is very, very poor (if not say 'bad'). It took me almost a month to identify the causes of unstability work of a stepper motor, having an angular pitch of the rotor 1.8°. A solution was found only after buying an oscilloscope, but not through consultation with technical support. It allows me to talk about the poor quality of the controller and Velleman technical support incompetence.