MobiFlight Community Support

Hey All,

New to this so bear with me, basically i have an elevator trim wheel similar to this,
https://bffsimulation.com/BFF_Motorised_Trim_Wheel.php
where I have a Nema 17 stepper directly connected to the center of the wheel, I then have a spur gear connected to a rotary encoder, which is different to the way the link above does it.

The ability of using the rotary encoder is, I only want pulses, not a linear axis to control the elevator trim up and down.
This means that by rights, I don't actually need to know where the stepper is ever located, as it can just continue to spin.
I still want the encoder to get up and down clicks of the wheel, which I'm pretty sure i can figure out with tutorials.

What i want to do though, is connect the stepper to the Arduino with the use of an A4988 stepper driver board, which only has 2 wires from the Arduino (step and dir pins).
I want the stepper motor to move to follow the autopilots elevator trim adjustments. But I believe that this might interfere with the up and down clicks as the encoder will also be moving at the same time as they are all linked.

How do I set the stepper motor up with the 2 wire configuration, to move with the auto pilots movements?
Is there a way I can have an internal variable that follows whether Autopilot is enabled or not, and this can then determine whether the input is enabled or disabled for the encoder? So when the autopilot is on, the stepper motor is moving and the encoder is also moving, but Mobiflight has turned the input off.

Any ideas please?