Asked — Edited

Digital Ports On New Ezb 4.0

Will I be able to plug the Servos Directly into these port without a voltage regulator? Can I use my old PING from EZB directly with the new board without voltage regulator?

If I need a regulator should I use a 11.1V Battery and turn it down to 5V


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United Kingdom
#1  

The V4 passes through whatever input voltage you supply it to the Vcc pins of the digital ports so if your servos are rated for a maximum voltage of 6 volts then your supply needs to be 6V or regulate the supply.

Sensors usually work on 5v and some can be very sensitive. Therefore you will probably require a regulator for the sensors and will need to regulate to 5v for the ping sensor (it is very sensitive to voltage).

That said, I believe I read that the analogue ports are regulated? (EZ-Robot staff please confirm) so analogue sensors such as the Sharp IR sensors would be OK.

Have a read of this topic it covers the EZ-Robot regulator add on:)

#2  

So the new robot comes with a 7.4V battery.

That means the Digital Port will have 7.4 on them.

So if you have 6V Servos and 5V sensors nothing will work? (The heavy duty servos state 4.8V to 7.2V) The other have no specs.

Are the servos I purchased with the original ezb kit (I purchased 2 total) 6 servos ea. and 1 ping sensor ea.

Looks like the hexapod is just straight plugged in ezb same thing with the Roli

Is that an issue?

United Kingdom
#3  

DJ has said that their servos will work on 7.2v however that may have been only the HD servos.

The 5V sensors certainly will need to be regulated as will any servos which are rated at less than 7.2v

#4  

So what would you recommend for a good total regulator?

7.4 down to 5.0 I am think about doing this to the input of the ezb

will the servo's still be fine?

#5  

It seems that JOSH knows most about this subject. (in my opinion). He has had the most experience. The whole thing has gotten foggie to me lately.

United Kingdom
#6  

Depending on the EZ-B V4 requirements which are currently unknown to me.

If it will run on 5V and so will all sensors and servos which you plan to use then you could regulate the input voltage with a simple 5V regulator circuit or pre-made regulator.

If on the other hand the EZ-B needs more than 5V to run then you need to fit the regulators between the servos/sensors and the power supply, using the regulated supply for the servo/sensor VCC.

Personally I use Etronix 6V 5A Regulators. I've never had a problem with them. These are fixed at 6V though so would be no use for sensors.

You could build a simple 5V 5A regulator circuit, a sample schematic would be like this

User-inserted image

Or you could use the EZ-Robot regulators as linked to in my previous reply. These are made specifically for the V4 so are probably the best option.

I would guess that the servos which EZ-Robot supply are capable of accepting 7.4v from their LiPo batteries since it has been mentioned before, although as previously mentioned it may have only been for the HD servos so you will need to check the servos you are using, the datasheet will tell you the min and max voltages they can accept. This would mean that you only need to use the regulators on ports which are for sensors, and even then you could probably get away with one 5V regulator to run all sensors.

#7  

Futaba PS-01RS 1 Amp Step Down Voltage Regulator

Will this work?

#8  

Align 5.1V Two-Way Step-Down Voltage Regulator

will 5.1 kill it?

#9  

I think the top end for the PING sensor here is 5.1volts so I think either of the above will work fine Second 1 is 1/4th the price

United Kingdom
#10  

Both will work.

5v1 shouldn't kill it (although there are reports on other forums and sites of even 0.1v killing but I would imagine that's the convenient excuse and thing to blame rather than user error).

PRO
Canada
#11  

Hey just wanted to jump in and verify that @Rich is correct that the analog ports indeed have a regulated 3.3V on their power rails and the rest of the digital pins have Vin (whatever battery voltage is supplied). For digital sensors and servos that can't handle an input voltage above 6V we do have the 5V regulator board (pictured in this thread).

In regard to the question about using the old plastic servos from the v3 kit on the new v4 board, DJ has done some testing and they do work at 7.4V, it won't kill them.