Use case is passive animatronics, where the machine will run through a sequence of motion upon power on. Can it run independently without being connected to a PC? Thanks.
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Hey @Makiedog,
Welcome to the RobotShop community! 
Short answer: Yes, but (probably) not exactly the way you imagine.
Long answer: Yes, but it still needs something to tell it what to do. Typically for such projects people use something like a small Arduino or other microcontroller board. It doesn’t have to be very powerful, just enough to run your sequence.
Otherwise another good option would be a Raspberry Pi (or a similar single board computer [SBC]).
Let me know if you have more questions on how to get about doing that and I can point you in the right direction!
Sincerely,
@scharette
isn’t there a way to start an action group just by triggering an IO pin on the SSC-32U?
If so, then a simple ResistorCapacitor-circuit could trigger the pin. The RC-circuit allows the SSC to boot and after the capacitor reaches the threshold, it triggers the pin.
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Scharette,
If the animation sequences were created in your software- SSC-32 Servo Sequencer Utility, how will the code be transferred to an Arduino board?
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The microcontroller on the SSC-32U is dedicated to managing the control of the 32 RC servomotor control signals.
The input pins on the SSC-32U need to be read by something external to have any use. The current firmware on the SSC-32U does not do anything with those pins other than pass the info along to an external controller of some kind (if asked using the read commands for analog or digital values).
Not a bad idea… if the SSC-32U could run sequences on its own! 
Well, that is currently a two step process:
- Export the sequences themselves from the SSC-32 Servo Sequencer Utility
- Run them in a piece of code that will output that data to the SSC-32U with the right timing
Step 1 has already been done before. The default free sequencer app does not do this / offer this option but I did make a modified version a while back that could. Let me see if I still have access to it… I’m pretty sure I posted it on this forum before. (I’ll post here again once I find it… or recreate it because I can’t )
Step 2 could be implemented basing yourself on this example. It is an example I created to control an AL5D (Lynxmotion RC servomotor based robotic arm) that uses an Arduino-based microcontroller board (BotBoarduino) and a SSC-32U connected to the RC servomotors of the robotic arm.
This example code could probably easily be adapted into playing any sequence, not just for arms.
Here’s the post I was thinking of!
You’ll need some kind of viewer of the output file… A text editor will work, but it won’t look very pretty. Any kind of spreadsheet editor should work much better. If you need a free tool you could look at LibreOffice, OpenOffice and Google Sheets.
Here’s an example of an import of a simple sequence I made to test the software’s output:
As you can see, the export has many details. The left most column has the name of the sequence. If you choose to export “current sequence” you’ll get only one of those. If you choose to export “all sequences” and have more than one, you’ll get more than one section.
Then, you’ll have a column for the number of the frame (index starts at 0, so 5 frames would be 0, 1, 2, 3, 4), one for when the frame starts (in seconds) and then the duration of that frame (also in seconds). This is then followed by one column per servo channel showing their positions.
Enjoy! 
Don’t wanna rain on your parade, but the Lobot LSC32 can store and run many action groups. (plenty of onboard memory, 16MB IIRC).
I thought that was common?
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I’m sure it can. Not going to say anything about its capabilities, since I’ve never tried one. But, what I can say after receiving questions about this board a few times (and the others of the same family) is this: try and find appropriate support for it online in English…
What I’m familiar with is the Pololu Maestro, which can accept scripts and run sequences independently. Problem is its GUI is not visual and timeline-based like the SSC-32 Servo Sequencer Utility, which makes it very difficult to program complex movements that synchronize with time-based events.
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Sorry for OT,
but just in case someone is looking for a understandable chinghlish documentation about the Lobot servo controllers: it’s in their dropbox
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Thanks for the links! Documentation is not support, though…