Hi:
What are the advantages to using digital servos?
Thanks,
Lawrence
Hi,
There are others that can answer this a lot better than I can. A lot depends on what digital servos you are talking about.
That is are you talking about for example going from a Hitec HS-645mg (analog) servo to a digital equivalent HS-5645mg? The biggest advantage is that they they provide more power. In the example above 133 to 168 oz. in. of power. Another advantage(or disadvantage) is that with analog servos you have to keep telling them their position every about 20ms to hold whereas with a digital servo you can tell it once and forget it. A disadvantage of this is that with analog servos you can put them to rest by stopping the signal, whereas with the Hitec ones once you give them a position there is no way besides power cycling them to go idle… On some of these digital servos you can use an external programmer to change some servo parameters like min/max angles and the like…
Now if you are talking about the Hitec digital servos (HSR-…) that are for example used in the Robonova. These have additional capabilities. Like there is a pulse signal you can send to free the servos. Also there are ways to query the current position of the servo… Note: I don’t believe that any of the HSR-… servos are compatible with the SES brackets.
Then there are Bioloid servos by Robotis. You hook these up with serial cables that you can daisy chain from one servo to the next. With these you can query and set values. Things like where is it, temperature… I don’t have any experience with these. Not compatible with SES.
…
Not sure if I answered you question.
Kurt
The biggest advantage even over more power is that the digital servos have smaller dead zones, An average analog servo can be force ±5 or even ±10 degrees out of position before it’s fighting back with 100% power. A digital servo will try to hold it’s position within around 1 degree with 100% power. Depending on the brand of digital servo this will vary but all digitals will hold with 100% power in a much smaller range than any analog servos. This of course is very important in robotics, especially if you are doing bipeds.