DGJOHNSON9044
Resolved by Luis Vazquez!
Good Morning Everyone,
I came across a couple pieces of hardware I am going to utilize in my R2-D2 Project. I was wondering if anyone has seen these, and if there was any scripts written with ARC for this hardware. I am going to use the Arduino DUE & UNO Hardware:
FIRST: 16-Channel 12-bit PWM servo shield I2C interface PCA9685 Adafruit-Compatible
16-Channel servo Shield
Using only two pins, control 16 free-running PWM outputs! You can even chain up 62 breakouts to control up to 992 PWM outputs
It's an i2c-controlled PWM driver with a built in clock. That means that, unlike the TLC5940 family, you do not need to continuously send it signal tying up your microcontroller, its completely free running!
It is 5V compliant, which means you can control it from a 3.3V microcontroller and still safely drive up to 6V outputs (this is good for when you want to control white or blue LEDs with 3.4+ forward voltages)
6 address select pins so you can wire up to 62 of these on a single i2c bus, a total of 992 outputs - that's a lot of servos or LEDs
Adjustable frequency PWM up to about 1.6 KHz
SECOND:
1PC 8 Channel Obstacle Avoidance Infrared Detector Tracked Sensor Module NN
8 Channel Infrared Detector Shield
8 Channel Infrared Detector Tracked Photoelectricity Sensor
Applications: A smart car or robot hunt (including black and white lines), walking along the path of the black line, also known as tracing. Smart car to avoid the cliff, anti-drop. Smart car for obstacle avoidance
Sincerely,
Dave Johnson
The digital ports are not regulated, so if you wanted to use 7.4v servos, you could either regulate the power to 7.4 before going into the v4 or use regulators from the digital ports to the servos.
The v4 can be powered by 200 amps if you want. It can only draw 20 amps before the fuse in the power base blows or the polyfuse flips. If you had a need for a lot of amps, I would recommend bypassing the V4 for power to these devices.
The other consideration in your scenario is the amps allowed by the regulator(s). They have a limited number of amps that they can provide. Linear regulators waste a lot of power. Digital or bec/ubec regulators can provide far more efficient power.
See post 103 in this thread for some really good digital regualtors
https://synthiam.com/Community/Questions/7398&page=11
Thanks Dave for the great advice. The project is EXACTLY what you have already begun...I am learning how to power an InMOOV hand that I 3D printed so I can learn how servos work for my BIGGER project of building the B9 robot. Davis S has been a great help to me as well. I had purchased Gael's nervo boards but I am not familiar with how to wire them or connect them...his tutorial is hard to follow for me. I think he is using Arduino and I can either use that or the EZB which I think the EZB will be much easier. Splitting out the power seemed to be what I was struggling with and understanding what makes a servo actually move...it needs a control signal...unlike a regular dc motor.
Bob, most of us are using 6v batteries - that way you do not need to regulate the voltage. I would recommend a 6 volt high amp battery. Get them at your local home alarm store or even auto motive stores.
Maybe Richard R can chime in on where he got his? I have his old battery so I don't know where it originated. But they're great and last a long time.
Voltage regulators are too high maintenance and generate a lot of heat.
I am working on a project that has several servos that are about 36 inches from the EZB4. what I want to do is use the Adafruit i2c 16-channel servo controller. I think I need to use the I2CWrite command. I think that the format of the command should I2CWrite(0,0x40,servo#,PWM Fz). But that is not working. I saw in the forum that DJ was looking into this board. Is there any information in how to make these work with the EZB4, i2c network? confused
Looked into it but the controller datasheet and documentation is lacking. It refers to LED's and not servos throughout the examples. It's not a popular enough controller to add native support for. I would recommend the SSC-32 servo controller because it has proper documentation and has native supporte by ez-robot.