@PM490
I’ve finished my Raspberry based project but yes the PC/Only, USB Camera + Digicamcontrol + stepper motor solution is definitely worth considering. I had already seen a number of such solutions based on a trigger I think. The Digicamcontrol arduino plugin for motor control is more rich in possibilities
@jankaiser
I have no problem with my NEMA 17 stepper. Mine is powered and 36V 1.5A. As Scott Schiller and Manuel_Angel I recommend a TB6600 based controller which has several advantages and is configurable (steps and intensity) by switches. The pigpio library is really very convenient to use. If you look at my code you can see how to use pigpio “wave chains” to implement a soft start (less sophisticated than the one described in the Atmel paper)