How to choose a stepper driver?

[apelly]

Starting from zero.

I've had a box of second hand stepper motors sitting around for a while, waiting for a rainy day. One of my projects needs some coils wound and I was thinking one of those $1 stepper drivers from ebay with an arduino woild do the trick in a couple of minutes. I still think it would. But now I'm wondering more broadly how to select a driver chip. Even amongst the $1 selection on ebay there are a handful of chips.

I've brought up this project on here before, it's an electromagnetic stirring hotplate. I was thinking of using some h-bridges for it, but now I wonder if I can get more bang from a stepper driver or two.

So that's the back-story, now I'd like to find out what I don't know about stepper drivers. I did do a bunch of reading some time ago, but most of that has slipped into the mist by now.

Have you got favourite drivers? Why?
Is there a best manufacturer?
A best footprint?

[jeremy]

Most of the differences between stepper motor drivers I have noticed come down to the following:

- Microstep ratios
- Maximum step frequency
- Maximum current to the windings
- Support for various motor wiring configurations

It really depends on how big your motors are, but for a hot-plate stirrer you most certainly don't need good microstepping (nor any microstepping at all really).

For what it's worth, I used drivers like these: http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/like/281616135028?limghlpsr=true&hlpv=2&ops=true&viphx=1&hlpht=true&lpid=107&chn=ps on a CNC with 420 Oz/in steppers and they work fine. If you have a smaller motor like this: http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-yhKSTGwrIX4/UfrLm60CnOI/AAAAAAAAADM/NY5BMn1oOp0/s1600/stepper_motor.jpg the A4988s should be fine with a little heatsink; this is what my 3D printer uses.