CohesiveCrawdad
Resolved by CochranRobotics!
Hello again all. I have a question regarding the heavy duty servos sold in the ez-b shop. I have looked through the specs on the servo in the shop, and read the tutorials that I thought would be applicable, but I can't find the Amps per Hour draw on the servos. I am working on a large project that requires 16 servos, and I am aware that the batteries and battery holders sold in the shop can't provide that much power through the EZ-B and the servos will brown out. I can't select the battery to provide the servos with direct power unless I know the amperage though. Also, an additional question. Does anybody have a suggestion for a rechargeable 7.4 volt battery (or batteries) with appropriate amperage? I planned on using the LiPo batteries from the shop, until I realized that I wouldn't have the low battery warning from the EZ-B, and I really don't feel like replacing that many AA batteries when they die, lol.
Thanks @d.cochran. I figured extra amperage wouldn't be a problem for the ezb, I just wanted to make sure. Also, I agree with @Dave schulpius, more people, (myself included from time to time) could benefit from being humble when proven wrong.
I've had similar brownout problems with arduino based projects, like @dave schulpius described. I'm going to try powering them from the ezb for now though, and if it proves too problematic I'll power them directly from the battery.
Thank you all!
For a 'low battery warning' with external power supplying the servos, you could make a resistor voltage divider between the supply and ground, then use one of the 8 ADC inputs to monitor the divided voltage.
Nice suggestion Oldbotbuilder. Another way (and the way i'm doing it) is to place a voltage regulator (properly sized for amp draw) before the EZB to supply voltage within the range EZB is looking for, power your less current demanding servos and sensors requiring that voltage through the EZB and channel the other HD current hungry servos around the EZB.
There is a voltage divider battery monitor tutorial I wrote kicking around the place somewhere, including script to monitor it (however it's probably from before some EZ-Script syntax changes so may need adjustment).
Here it is