Small unipolar stepper motor driver, programmable?

[electronics-whiz]

I recently ended up with an old Pan/Tilt mount for a CCTV camera. I may also be gettin a second very similar one soon too. They were basically going to be tossed because no one knows anything about them and no use for them anymore. The one I have is made by MDK, but I can not find out anything about them, or even what the original controller looked like.

I took the one apart and it has a pair of mid size unipolar (6 wire) stepper motors, a few limit switches on the tilt system, an LED/pickup between the base and the turret and a microswitch tripped when it does about 360 degrees. There are two main PCBs, one is a motor driver, the other seems more logic like and has a smaller processor type board on it.

Looking at the connection that was labeled control it appears to go to a chip in the base and uses serial connection, then that connects to the logic board. This just seems like a mess to even try to figure out. so i'd like to scrap the original boards for something simpler. I know they make mounts like this still, but these are rated for about 45 LB and a new one costs like $800-$1000. (Although maybe I need to look at this type device in robotics and not camera stuff, but based on the load limit and metal construction that price does not seem like would be easy to get down much.)

I was kind of thinking controlling these with a pair of potentiometers, and maybe even USB would be cool. I first thought just use arduino, but not sure if that would work well, or if i'd need adon boards, etc. The device also originally ran on 24V AC. I believe steppers are usually DC and this also had some regulation ceriguits in it to make like 3 an 7V DC.

I am just unsure arduino would be the way to go about this or if I would be better with a stepper driver. A potentiometer based system would be nice for a standalone type setup, I think it would be neat to link one to a PC too and maybe add an arm, claw, etc and make a robotic arm of sorts.