Hi
I am making animatronic talking props.
I am trying to find out how to power the servos and not have them power on the control board.
The prop i am making has 16 servos and the control will run 16 servos.
So is there a way to power the servo independently from the board and only have the communication wire connected to the board.
So can some one walk me thru this please
Thanks for the help
Yes. When connecting the servos to the boars only connect the signal wire (yellow) and then connect the red and black from each servo to another power source. That set up would see you having separate power for servos and board.
That was a very simple answer for a seemingly complex problem im having. Maybe i am just making everything harder then it seems. So how do i determine how large of an a/c power adapter to get. Do i need to add up the milliamps and get a 6v/12v power supply equal to or above the added milliamps? Lets say all 16 servos are drawing 5 milliamps. So i will need to provide 80 milliamps. Now a imagine i need to hook up the power supply to a bus and then connect each servos red and black wires to the bus…
And do i need to splice each wire into a y pattern.
Hi,
Yes, it is possible to power your servos separately from the controller, but make sure to have a common Ground between you separate power supply, servos and controller board.
The red wires of all servos will share your external power supply’s +6VCC/12VCC and the black wires of all servos will share your external power and controller GND. Each signal pin from your servo controller will be connected to its according signal pin on the servo.
As for choosing the appropriate power supply, you can choose one with a current rating by adding the current consumption for all the servos when stalled (to be safe).
For example, if you are using 16 x 6V servos and each servo consumes, let’s say, 100mA when stalled, a 6V 1.6A power adapter should be OK.
