Alternate power source for servo speed controller?

I have PWM speed controllers much like the ones in servos that I would like to use to drive some DC motors. The problem is I need to drive the servo off an alternate power source then that of the microcontroller, is there any way to do this?

The speed controller has three wires, black, red and white. I tried hooking up battery pack to the black and red wires and the PWM signal to the white wire but I think the reason it didn’t work is because the PWM signal didn’t have a reference to it’s own ground?

Thanks for the help,

Nathan

You aren’t ever driving servos directly from the microcontroller for power. The power normally comes from batteries. The white or yellow wire is the only wire the microcontroller has control over - that is the signal wire.

All grounds should be connected together, but power can be independent. You need a common ground, which is why it is often called common, for things to work properly.

8-Dale

Thanks, that helped a lot.

Is it ok to connect the grounds of two batteries together if they are of different voltages?

[EDIT]phpBB left aligns everything, jeeze. Here’s a picture of text, I would have just drawn it in paint if I’d known it would’ve left aligned…[/EDIT]

http://img147.imageshack.us/img147/1830/serverwiringfu0.jpg

Excuse my ridiculously lame ascii drawing :slight_smile: But is that correct?

Psst! If you use the [code]

[/code] tags, you can do ASCII diagrams easily. Everything within the [code] tags will be monospaced font (think Notepad), and extra spaces will be saved.

Yes, that is correct (assuming you aren’t going to connect the Vs+ and - lines together as possibly is shown in the picture :stuck_out_tongue:)

You in all your bot, you should connect all the grounds. This gives the entire bot one “0V Reference” to measure from. Just don’t tie the positive sides together if there is a potential difference between them.

Great, it made sense that it wouldn’t hurt anything but I just wanted to check…

Sienna, isn’t it obvious that the “|” bridges over the (-) wire? :smiley:

I’ll remember to use the [code] tag if I ever hazard attempting an ascii drawing again, thanks.

Thanks again for all the help everyone.