@Rich Could you point me towards a visual picture of how this would be done? I thought that might be the issue, but wasn't sure about setting up the voltage regulators and a seperate battery etc

From my Melvin topic;

Quote:

A small piece of strip board (not sure if that's what it's called over that side of the pond), 0.1" spacing with a copper strip from one end to the other on each row. I took a few servo extensions and cut the red and black from the male end, soldered these to the strip board and left the other end so the servo can plug in. Male end plugs in to EZB to give only the signal wire. Power board supplies both +6V and Ground to the servo (or female end) I soldered the +6V and Ground from the 6V regulator to the strip board which gave one row +6V and the other Ground. And viola, basic break out board for 6V.

Along with a later explanation including some photos

Quote:

Snip off the red & black from the servo extension which plugs in to the EZB. Solder them to 2 tracks on the strip board. Solder the 6V supply to the strip board (not shown) Viola... 6V power distribution.

I saw this and was kinda confused. Do I need any volatge regulators, capacitors or resistors for this setup? Also im amusing I need a separate battery for the board and servos?

Depends on the voltage of the battery.

I run it from a 5A 6V regulator and power two MG995s from that (3 circuits total).

If your battery is 6V (I have read MG995s can take 7.3v+ but I've not been brave enough to test it out) then you wont need a regulator.

If you run the servos from their own battery just make sure you give it a common ground (i.e. join all grounds together).

Unfortunately I have no time at the moment, I should have been in bed half an hour ago as it is. I may have time Monday if you need a better explanation however hopefully the above is clear enough. I have described what I did with Melvin in Melvin's topic, it's around page 16, 17, 18, somewhere around there anyway.

@Rich thanks for all the info you have been a huge help! You were correct, the board wasn't getting enough power. I hooked up a 6v 7a battery and had no problem getting both the board to run and the mp3 trigger to play!

I was having a similar problem with my Sparkfun MP3 trigger on my Wall-e project. All the sounds play fine, except the Wall-e dance song which would always cut off after a couple of seconds. When the trigger is not connected to the EZ-B, the dance song plays all the way through to the end. But when it is connected to the EZ-B and the dance script is started the song will cut off. After reading this thread, I flipped the switch on MP3 trigger to external power and plugged another battery back to just the MP3 trigger. Now the song plays perfectly, this was the last item on my "to-do list for this project. Thanks!

Unfortunately this is a limitation on the V3 boards. They can only deal with 5A maximum and when some servos can draw over 2A start up current (MG995s for instance) the board browns out and causes issues. It's an issue that's been noted and addressed by EZ-Robots on the V4 though which is great news.

@Chrisb66, it may work better if you powered the servos externally rather than the MP3 Trigger, if you were looking to make any improvements. If it works fine as is and you are happy then why fix what isn't broken, but if you are looking to improve it in the future that's the path I would take personally.

Glad to be of help