I designed and build an entire xyz microscope stage from scratch (see here). Therefore I needed an electronic kit to control stepper motors that moved the stage.

The kit can move the stage by using a game pad or computer command line (and then LabView, Andor basic, Matlab and so on) and is very easy to use.

When steering the stage by a gamepad, the speed depends on how much the sticks are away from their middle position. Moreover, by pressing buttons it is possible to adjust position very preciselly and very conveniently. The kit has a LCD display that displays current position when gamepad is used. It is therefore very easy to go back to some previous position and to have general idea about actual position of the microscope relative to the sample.

To build the kit I used:

• Arduino Mega ADK (has additional usb port)
• RAMPS 1.4 board (RepRap Arduino Mega Pololu Shield)
• 3 x Stepstick stepper motor driver
• universal breadboard
• power supply
• a gamepad
• an lcd display

Everything nicely fits one of many available universal enclousures. You can see the internal elements on the picture below.

Below you can have another look at the components, this time disasembled. There are, from the left: Arduino Mega board, Reprap arduino shield, 3x Stepstick stepper motor drivers. Please notice that here I disassembled another set, with a standard arduino mega board - therefore no control by a gamepad in this setup, just control by a computer.

The arduino sketch code for the electronic kit is available on github, so feel free to contribute there.