Stepper motors require a motor driver, said everybody. So you start searching around for "why" information, and a recommendation.

General information was plentiful. But picking a specific driver, and configuring it, was confusing and intimidating.

Fortunately you find some help on Hackster. 

But first, the general information

"Stepper motors require a stepper controller to energize the phases in a timely sequence to make the motor turn," says Adafruit.

A couple of electrical engineers also address the question on Quora. 

"A motor driver is a little current amplifier; the function of motor drivers is to take a low-current control signal and then turn it into a higher-current signal that can drive a motor, says Future Electronics.

Got it. 

Now the hard part

But picking a specific driver, and configuring it, and connecting it to a stepper motor, and a Particle Photon, was confusing and intimidating.

Around this time, you began following IoT projects on Hackster. The site has a great feature that allows you to view projects by platform and categories. Some boxes you check:

• Arduino
• circuito.io
• IFTTT
• Lights
• Make:
• Particle
• Raspberry Pi
• Seeed Sensors

One active maker, on a few platforms, is Evan Rust. When you ping him, he recommends this DRV8825 Stepper Motor Driver Carrier, High Current.

It's more than a chip, I read in one of the technical descriptions, it's actually a "carrier board or breakout board for TI’s DRV8825 stepper motor driver." 

So the guts of the thing is a DRV8825, made by Texas Instruments. 

You decide to give it a try.