Data Sheet

then the Tic will be able to instantly change from any velocity in the range of −1000000 to +1000000 to

any other velocity in that range. Setting the starting speed might allow you to make your system faster

since it will not waste time accelerating or decelerating through low speeds where it is not needed.

4.4. Setting up USB control

This section explains how to control the Tic over USB.

If you have not done so already, you should follow the instructions in Section 4.3 to configure and test

your stepper motor. You should leave your Tic’s control mode set to “Serial / I²C / USB” (the default),

and you should also set your desired baud rate. That section also shows how to control the Tic over

USB using the Tic Control Center software. If the Tic Control Center’s graphical user interface is good

enough for you, you do not need to set up anything else and can skip the rest of this section.

Another option for controlling the Tic over USB is to use the Tic Command-line Utility, ticcmd . You

can either run the utility directly by typing commands in your command prompt (shell), or you can write

your own software that runs it.

To try out ticcmd , you should open a new command prompt and run ticcmd without any arguments.

This causes ticcmd to print out a help screen listing all the options it supports. You can combine

multiple options in one invocation.

If your command prompt prints out a message indicating that ticcmd is not found or not recognized,

make sure you have installed the Tic software properly as described earlier in this guide. Also, make

sure that the directory containing the ticcmd executable is in your PATH environment variable, and

try starting a new command prompt or terminal after installing the software.

To set the target position or velocity of the Tic, try running these commands:

ticcmd --exit-safe-start --position 400

ticcmd --exit-safe-start --velocity 2000000

Note: The --position option can be abbreviated as -p , and --velocity can be

abbreviated as -y .

If the commands above do not produce movement, you should run ticcmd --status to print out the

errors that are currently stopping the motor. This might tell you what is going wrong.

On Microsoft Windows, only one device can access the Tic’s USB interface at a time, so

you will need to close the Tic Control Center software before running ticcmd .

4. Setting up the controller Page 31 of 150