Society of Robots - Robot Forum
Electronics => Electronics => Topic started by: Eyeman on December 31, 2009, 04:37:54 AM
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Hi all,
After lurking around here for a few years I decided to take the plunge, and build an overly complex robot as my first project.
I want to base the electronics/programming around the '$50' robot tutorial, and had a quick question;
As you can see from my design sketch, it has four legs, of which I will control with one servo each. Plus one servo to tilt
the 'head' up and down. Now that's 5 servos total, and my question is this; do I need any special parts to run this many servos,
or can I basically purchase the $50 robot parts list unaltered(Plus extra servos of course)?
Also, is it difficult to link extra LED's into the circuit just for showiness? In fact, just how much stuff can I run off one microcontroller?
Ok so that's sorta three questions:D
Thanks!
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Yeah, the $50 robot controller can definitely take 5 servos plus heaps of led's!
It has somewhere around the park of 18 I/O pins!
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Aha! Cool thanks man!
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Yes the $50 robot can handle 5 servos, in fact if you build the $50 robot to specs you have upto 5 servo ports so it will work with no modification. Over all you can have well i am not sure of the number but quite a few more. As for the leds yeah you can connect them to any of the left over i/o pins so you could potentially have approximatly 10 different LEDs or more leds working in 10 segments/groups.( you could potentially have 5 leds on the robot connected to a single port and they would act as a group or you could connect those LEDs to different ports for control of all 5).
I hope i answered your question. So yeah the $50 board would easily handle what you have in your outline.
If you have any questions just post your questions.
Good luck
Joker94
EDIT:Sorry I didn't realize smash beat beat me :D
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Thanks Joker, so many cool choices to make!
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And don't forget smash, he beat me to it.
so like smash said you can have upto 18 controllable items. ;D
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You would probably need to beef up the power supply though, as the $50 robot does not cater for running 5 servos at once. Th I/O is there, just not the power requirements.
It's an easy fix though, just add a larger regulator, say 3-5 amps. If this is not possible (not really sure), you could use a uBEC or ParkBEC, which are just huge 5v regulators, up to like 10A+ which is waaaayyyyyy more than enough for 5 servos :D
-HyperNerd
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Uhh, servos don't normally run off a regulated supply... They go off a battery...
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I always run mine off a regulated 5 or 6v supply, so they always go at the same speed till the battery dies :-/
-HyperNerd
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Ahh, i see... The $50 board doesn't do this though...
Smart idea though!
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I always run mine off a regulated 5 or 6v supply, so they always go at the same speed till the battery dies :-/
I see what your getting at
very smart :D
Joker94