Hello, I made the leap after a fair amount of research and bought an ezbv4 last night. My initial application is static so I deferred buying a battery..unless I missed it I did not see a wired power adapter in the store. I have read some of the power tutorial.. I did get the power base also.
I am looking for a recommendation on finding a power supply.
I expect to eventually run 18 micro servos and possibly up to five brushed motors. Three of these are larger and draw 1.8a stalled.. I never expect to have all the servos running at once.. I plan to have the. Brushed motors running through escs so their power can be drawn from another source. If you follow.
I want to make sure I have something soon.. So to start I could use a dc wall wart say 12 volt 2amp with 2.1 mm barrel?
Can someone throw out some links to recommended sources? I am inclined to go to one of the mote prominent online robot shops. Does that make sense?
If you use 5v, the servos won't perform to their best. I would suggest getting as close to their max rating as possible to get the best performance. That being said, 5v is much more common amongst any sensor or servo company. so for a trade of less power, you get more compatibility without the need for regulators.
@Kennard42
Here are the terminals pin assignments for the mean well supply in your last link from their datasheet...
1.) A/C input live 2.) A/C input Neutral 3.) Input Ground/Earth 4.) DC output Ground 5.) DC output Ground 6.) DC output Positive .7) DC output Positive
Servo inrush is difficault to measure as it happens so quickly which is why you won't see it very often in spec/datasheets. As has been mentioned, it's probably best to go to the higher end of the scale for the servo power specs. If one is rated for maximum 6v input, grab your self a 6v supply.
I use two similar micro servos (in your first link) which I had laying around, in my current robot project, but rated at 5v to 7.4v Max using a 7.2v battery and they work great at that voltage. Using less than 7.2v with the ones I use and the servos begin to jitter slightly and have trouble moving or holding anything near the maximum specified stall torque.
I seem to have a conundrum here.
I am not having much luck finding a power supply at 6v.
I was looking hard at the meanwell line which seems very extensive yet and it seems they have 5v, 7,5v, 12v and many more higher, but not seeing 6V! But it sounds like my servos may jitter at 5v and at 7.5v I could fry them.
So... do I have to get a higher output supply and then get something like this?
A step-down voltage regulator: https://www.pololu.com/product/2852
Or perhaps this step-up/down voltage regulator: https://www.pololu.com/product/2575
@Kennard42.
I only mention servo jitter at 6v because that's what I experienced on a 7.4v micro servo of the same brand some time ago. Chances are that a 5v supply will be okay with your 5-6v servos. Most servos like that will work okay at 5v, where giving it the maximum 6v will make it a little stronger. You could use the regulators/drop-downs you linked to, but it would have to be one per servo.
@dj, where do you place the capacitors? I have two 1/5 scale servos for ALANs neck that always brown out the ezb on a mean well 20 amp power supply and moved up to a 40 amp with a bit better performance , but would like to try the capacitors. That way I can stick with a smaller power supply.
Will, you will need some super caps that are rated over 3.3V.
I ended up using two 1Farad 2.5V Aerogel caps in *series to boost the voltage rating to 5V.
Then you can place the caps on the GND & 3.3V pins next to the analog pins.
Be very careful you get the polarity correct or the caps could explode
Thanks very much!
No prob!
oops I made a mistake those caps are in series, edited post.