see below 7.4 volt and 4.5 amp

servo

@Slee The Sloth.

It does indeed sound like the power supply you are using is not supplying enough amps for the servo inrush. That would be the main cause to why the EZ-B is resetting. 3 amps will defiantly not be enough for servos. The current advice that other users and myself mention is to use a supply that can produce at least 15 or 20 amps, minimum, if using a plug in power supply. The other options are Lipo and Nimh battery packs which can handle the current output.

Another thing to keep in mind when using a step down converter or regulators, as well as output voltage, is the amp output too. You could be suppling 12 volts and 20 amp input supply through a 6 volt regulator for example, but if that regulator is rated for 3 amps output, that's all your servos will get... 3 amps. So you would need a buck converter or regulator that matches you voltage needs, but with a much higher current output.

Hope that helps.

This makes me kind of wonder, why this happened on the 12 volt 18 amp hour battery just the same as the 12 volt 3 amp power supply. I run my full scale R2 off this bugger ( 12 volt 18 apm hour battery) and he has 13 servos + 2 drive motors and then servos and Arduino's.

I do know how to test this though. I will use 2 of my 12 volt 18 amp batteries and see what happens.

You have 12V servos or are you using a voltage regulator to drop down the voltage to 6/7.4V for the servos? Your step down can't provide enough current for the servos to run even though you have a huge 12V SLA battery as your power source.... You will need 20amps+ at 6/7.4v not 3amps to handle the "inrush" power requirements of multiple servos... Your step down regulator is your bottle neck....

What is your step down converter you're running the servos/v4 off rated at for current/amp output?

he wrights 6 volts

@nomad.

Voltage is not the problem or the question here. It's amperage/current.

@nomad... 6V or 7.4V it doesn't matter... his voltage converter is not able to supply enough current to move multiple servos....

@Slee The Sloth I just bought 20 of these for the exact purpose of what you are trying to do ... Variable volatge regulators You would use 1 (inline) per servo....

P.S. Steve figured out your problem so you should give him the credit for resolving this...

ah thank you bolt

Well folks, Thank you all for your input. It seems you where all right at some point. The 12 volt 3 amp power supply could not deliver the needed amps. Then as Steve G was asking what a bought the 12 volt to 6 volt converter. Gee its only rated at 3 amps. HHmmm... Bottle neck found. So I used 4 of my R2 battery's at 12V 7 amp hour. the 12 volt 18 amp hour set is being charged for tomorrow. But the 4 12 volt 7 amp hour battery's with 3 of 12 volt to 5 volt converters in series gave me 10.5 amps. Now funny things are a happening, the darn thing works fine!

Sorry I did not reply faster. I have to disconnect my PC from the internet to use my EZB-4. If I connect my EZ-B 4 to the wifi network the cam will not work, even when I use the IP finder to get both the EZB4 and cam on the same IP. But that's a problem for another day. Thank you all vary much.

Richard R, You where right on as well. Thanks

No problem. Glad I could help.

And thanks Richard.

Linear power supplies will suffer delivering their specified amperage - this is an inherit limitation to the design of a linear power supply.

If you want sufficient power for servos, then a digital switching power supply is what you require - I recommend an ATX power supply from a PC.

DJ,

Humm good idea on the ATX power supply. I seem to have a few of those kicking around.

Thanks.

I'm having same problems with the android head. Its connected to my to my Powerwerx SPS-30DM which is designed to supply 25 Amps continuous and 28 Amps surge. The neck servos are the Power HD 1235mg, they are rated at 7.4v and stall torq can be as much as 9 amps. I've never seen the amps go above 2 amps, but i have the exact same problem, as times passes the servo exhibits odd behavior and then eventually the EZB reboots. How is it possible I don't have enough amps with that power supply?! Am I missing something?

Edit: could wire gage be an issue?

@fxrtst Put it on a lipo battery to test.. if it stops rebooting then it is your power supply causing the issue.. If the ezb continues to reboot check you wiring is of the appropriate gauge to supply those amps... I use 14g battery wire to my servo board and ezb... Perhaps over kill, but I have no issues driving 26 servos on my inMoov using a 6V SLA battery....

Thanks Richard, looks like I'm off to the hobby store! I'll let you know how it goes.

Make sure you buy a lipo that can delivery a minimum of 25C... If it has heavy duty battery leads then it is the one you want....

I've said this before many times. I don't think it's a good idea to channel power for servos on these big robots through the EZB. Using the EZB as a power conduit will only rob the EZB of voltage when the servos start sucking current. Yes I know Voltage and current are two different things but it's a fact of nature that one depends on the other. On these bigger servos that are moving heavy loads you should route your power around the EZB. A alternate power supply is even a better idea but I've found this really unnecessary unless your PS is underrated for your amp load. By simply running power directly from the PS to the servo (or it's properly sized step down regulator) you will avoid EZB brown outs.

Also throw out the in line linear voltage regulators and get some Switching BEC's.

Castle Creations CC Bec 10A 6S Switching Regulator

Good Luck.

@richard thanks I'm here now. Just in time!

@dave I originally for my testing purposes had this set up with separate power going to these servos. This is the first time I have the system set up all thru the EZB. Since the d ports are longer regulated, I let the EZB power to be the same as the big servos at 7.4v then I have bec's on the 2 micro servos for the eyes. The jaw servo gets its regulated power from the audio servo control board. I think the length and gauge of wires might be my a problem too. Worst case I'll just set up the big servos on their own direct power from my line in and avoid putting that thru the EZB. I find it hard to believe with all the digital ports and the EZ servos rated higher than standard servos (6v I think) that mine would brown out with just two servos?!?

My EZB browned out with only one 7.4v HS-7950th servo attached. It's tested to pull 4.8 amps in a stall/lock on situation. It was also mounted inside a servo City gear box (see below) and lifting about 3 lbs at the end of a 12 inch channel (the B9 claw and wrist sold by a B9 club vendor. You know how heavy that set up is). When I rerouted the power directly to the PS I had no issues. Wire size is very important and perhaps larger wire would help to allow current to pass to and from the EZB easier. However my theory of routing power through the EZB is when the current reaches it, it still has to pass through several connectors, another fuse, pins and board traces that are smaller then your enlarged wire before it exits and moves on the motor. Sounds like a bottle neck to me.

Here's the one servo mounted in the gearbox that browned out my EZB under load:

Electricity is very strange and will do strange things. My experience as a power distribution lineman who has been working on and repairing low voltage and overloading problems on a large urban power grid for almost 35 years now show me that overloaded wire can handle a lot of current. The voltage will drop some but usually it will heat up or melt. Under constant load the loading device will just keep pulling the current is needs till the conductor fails. More powerful devices like DC motors will rob current away from more sensitive devices like electronics if they are on the same circuit. In situations where there are low voltage problems on our power grid our engineers usually have us install larger transformers closer to the load. However sometimes we'll also upgrade the wire sizes if they are obviously to small.

Now startup load is a whole norther animal. This is probably what is causing the EZB brown outs. When the servo starts up the current demand spikes. If your feeding servo through the EZB the PS cant deliver enough current quick enough to keep the it up and running. This happens on our urban power grid also. When big industrial customers start turning on their motors and other current hungry devices the voltage on our distribution lines start to drop. We place large capacitors in line that switch on at times we know this will be a problem (like in the morning of a work day) to keep the voltage from sagging. We don't usually change the conductor size (unless it's a huge current draw like a fire pump), we just add ampacity. Our little servo, sensor and EZB circuits are much the same as a big city power grid, just smaller.

Sorry if I bored anyone. I thought this may be useful to this issue.

@Dave, not boring at all. That actually helps a lot in explaining this situation.

Particularly the bit about the high draw devices "robbing" from the low draw devices.

Alan

Excellent info Dave. I just tried a larger gauge wire and seems to be working better, but now I think just for safely purposes I'm gonna reroute power to the large big bad boys. You right there are lots of bottle necks along the way as I have to be able to dismantle the pieces so there are connectors here and there, lots of servo pins for the lack of a better word. It should not add too much more wiring to the already tight neck and head. I'll let you know how it goes.

Thanks again and NEVER boring!

Hey guys ,popping in for a moment, I was going to wait till next week , but I will drop the bomb now. Obviously I have been a supporter of "external power for high torque servos" for obvious reasons. I will soon have a version of my inline regulators that use external power , a ground reference and a signal pass through. This way there is still adjustable voltage but from a external source.

Castle BEC are great , but the cost is also very high as well, that being said mine are value focused for the budget minded hobbiest, student or child.

You can use this to bypass the ezb for power... Cheaper than @Dave's option (if you have a adequate power supply and/or battery)... It supports up to 8 servos...Servo power board

@Josh also has a great option too with his 3amp inline variable voltage regulators....

I'll definitely be getting a handful of Josh's regulators.

Hi all, sorry i am a noob at this, it's my first time.

My problem is that my ez-b 4 is disconnecting, i have looked into nearly all the threads here and have upgraded to a lipo battery 2500mah so more than sufficiant power. The strange thing is that if i open a new project the board connects fine and never cuts off, but when i load the JD project and try to connect it gives me the following:

Attempting connection on 192.168.1.54:23 Connected to 192.168.1.54:23 Reports EZB v4 OS With Comm 1 EZ-B v4 ID: 67-50-0-0-46-255-57-59-54-38-38-38 Setting battery monitor voltage: 7 Setting battery protection: True Setting i2c rate: 300000 EZ-B voltage is 8.184497646 EZ-B temperature is 24.44489368264605312C Connected Comm Err: System.IO.IOException: Unable to read data from the transport connection: A connection attempt failed because the connected party did not properly respond after a period of time, or established connection failed because connected host has failed to respond. ---> System.Net.Sockets.SocketException: A connection attempt failed because the connected party did not properly respond after a period of time, or established connection failed because connected host has failed to respond at System.Net.Sockets.Socket.Receive(Byte[] buffer, Int32 offset, Int32 size, SocketFlags socketFlags) at System.Net.Sockets.NetworkStream.Read(Byte[] buffer, Int32 offset, Int32 size) --- End of inner exception stack trace --- at System.Net.Sockets.NetworkStream.Read(Byte[] buffer, Int32 offset, Int32 size) at EZ_B.EZB.M3jweGrVXK(Int32 , Byte[] cmdData) BbytesToExpect: 2

Received: 0 0 Disconnected

Can someone please help me out i am really giving up here it has been 3 days now stress

I am on Windows 10 ent. 64 bit 64 gb Ram no antivirus running and firewall disabled

It isn't a battery problem. It is an I2C problem.

Check the cable to the JD Eyes and make sure it has a good connection.

Find the JD-No Eyes sample project and try that (or just try a connection with no project loaded).

If any I2C object tries to initialize and can't find the device, the EZ-B will lock up and disconnect.

Alan

I'm guessing due to the strange 3rd party battery that you 3D printed a jd and don't have the rgb eyes.

Remove the rgb animator from the project before connecting to the ezb.

Hi guys and thanks for your help, i am sorry i opened another thread on this topic but as i said i am really new at this and new to the forum so when it sent me a mail that i had helped another member well i guessed it was the wrong place to post. I had already loaded the no rgb project but still had the same problem. I think in the mean time i have found out the problem. i have a shorted servo. i disconnected it resetted everything and it seems to move without any problem.

Once again thanks for the help and again sorry for the double thread