Hello,
I am building Johnny 5 and I am going to use the wiring/powering as in #5 picture (ssc32 + sabertooth) except I have only 6vdc (not 9vdc) battery for ssc32 logic. Do you think it is enough?
6v is plenty for the logic. When a 9v battery is used, the regulator drops the voltage down to 5v anyway. As long as you use 6 to 9v, you will be fine. I used one 6v pack to power both my logic and servo power and it ran fine. For best performance though, you should use separate power sources for the logic and servos, especially with multi leg bots. With a single source, when servos draw power, it robs power from the logic and can cause the brains to “black out”. 
Hi ssc32 users.
I was using 3 servos perfectly (hs 311 type) as soon as I added one servo to be controled, everything went erratic.
my power supply delivered 500 mA max.
Just before purchasing one new, I come here to know which one to choose
I’ve read such servos are demanding 180 mA to work properly.
I will have between 27 to 30 servos to be controle at once.
30x180mA equals nearly 5A?
Do I have to find a 6V 5A powersupply, or is it a bit more complicated?
thanks. (i’m a newbee)
Sounds like you understand it well. Yes you need to ensure you have enough current for all the servos in your project. Projects that use a lot of servos may require a separate VL supply.
thanks.
I bought two 6V 3,5 A power supplies, The logic is on a 9v Battery.
everything works great. Thanks
hello good people!
I got a lend of an ssc32 from a friend who had a couple spare.
I’m using it to control 16 Turnigy TG9E servos, in a stationary mounting bracket (it’s a dobby loom control mechanism, so it doesn’t move about)
I’m powering the servos with a 6V regulated wall supply.
At the moment I’m powering the logic seperately with 9V batteries, but they don’t last very long (they’re kinda cheap) before the voltage drops and the logic resets itself and it all goes wrong.
I need the board to continue running all day long so I think batteries aren’t a solution. I’m thinking of buying a 9V DC regulated wall supply. Is the current supplied an issue? is there a minimum or maximum or will any 9V regulated supply from Maplin work?
Cheers
Andrew
The current requirements for 9vdc are about 50mA - 60mA, so pretty much any 9vdc wall pack should suffice.
Hello Everyone !
I’m really interested by the SSC-32 and since I am a newbie in electronics I have a few questions about powering 
I plan to use it with an Arduino Uno and saw 2 people accross the web using the +5v out of the Arduino to connect the VL on the SSC-32. If I’m not mistaken the SSC-32 has a regulator on VL that needs at least 6v to 9v in order to convert it to 5v.
So I’m wondering, how does that actually works ? When power supplied with 5v the actual voltage in the board should be something closer to 4v and it shouldn’t work or at least behave erratically, am I wrong ?
If it is okay to do so, I will power my Arduino with a mintyboost which has specifications : 5V output @ 500mA output. I saw that the SSC-32 is only drawing 35mA with nothing connected to the 5v outpout so it should be fine there.
Now for the servos powering part, there doesn’t seem to be any regulator here. But on the pictures in the first post we can see the voltage of the power supply is 6v-7.2v but most servos are 6v, 7.2v without regulation from the board will damage them, won’t it ? My servos would be 4.8v-6v, I thought of powering them with some AA 1.2v 2700mah. Here is a graph :
img.photobucket.com/albums/v482/ … sRates.gif
As I understand it with some load they rapidly lose voltage and go below 1.2v so using four of these doesn’t seem to be an option since after a short time the voltage will be < to 4.8v required by the servos. Now using 5 of them could be quite nice but at the start on the graph they deliver around 1.4v which would make 7v and since there is no regulator on VS, correct me if I’m wrong, it would likely damage the servos. So I’m lost here 
How can I do that ?
Well that turned into a massive and probably boring post, thanks in advance to those who had the courage to read it to the end
You are correct, it is not a good idea to feed a 5vdc regulator with 5vdc and expect it to work reliably. You can feed 5vdc to the board, but there isn’t an easy way to do that.
There is no problem feeding servos from a 6vdc battery. That means 4 alkaline, or 5 rechargeable batteries. Both equate to 6.0vdc. We and everyone else in the industry have been doing that for years. That is the norm. The statistics should really say 6.0vdc to 7.4vdc for VS. Yes there are many servos that are designed to operate on 7.4vdc.
I would strongly urge you NOT to use “AA” batteries and flimsy plastic battery holders if you are going to drive more than a couple servos. The holders can not pass the current required to power servos.
Thanks a lot for all these informations !
You mean that right ?
I will control at least 15 TG9E servos ( I’m happy to see that apk5 on page 2 is using these exact servos because I wasn’t sure if it would work since it’s written “Servo type supported = Futaba or Hitec” on the description page ).
The Sanyo AA 2700mah battery itself survived a 10A draw based on the graph I linked so it’s good on this end and I was planning to use this type of holder robotshop.com/sfe-battery-holder-4xaa-3.html. Unfortunately it doesn’t seem to exist in 5 AA size and putting a 3 AA + 2 AA in series seem like a mess, is it a bad idea to take that a 6 AA size, put 5 batteries in it and put a wire in the place of the last battery ?
After reading your post I’m also thinking of buying this :
- adafruit.com/products/248 for the arduino and connect the unregulated output to the SSC-32. ( that should still be fine since there is low current going to the arduino and SSC-32 )
The SSC-32 can control virtually any hobby servo.
Yes it is fine to use a 7.2 source for the VL inputs. They do not draw much current. But the battery holder you linked is the exact thing to avoid when powering servos! Do you really think that littler bitty tiny 28 gauge wire can handle 10 amps?.. The springs that make the electrical connection, do you really think a small piece of wire can pass 10 amps with so little surface area making contact?.. Look at the size wires on our battery packs. Compare them to the battery holder…
Thanks !
At first I thought you meant exactly what I linked but I read again and the “flimsy plastic” part made me think the other way 
Yes you’re right about the cable size, did not think that way so basically I could take this 7.2v 2800mah ( the green one ) to power the arduino and SSC-32 and the same in 6v 2800mah to power the servos. Is this cable the correct way to plug it to the SSC-32 VS : cgi.ebay.fr/TAMIYA-PLUG-FEMALE-T … 3a58edbd9c ? ( I made sure that the cable AWG was low this time but I’m unsure if the green pack tamiya is indeed a male ).
In case it is a female, there is also this one : cgi.ebay.fr/TAMIYA-PLUG-MALE-TWO … 3a58edd573
It seems to be a little overkill to use 2800mAh to power a few tens of mA… I have used 1600mAh packs for that.
http://www.lynxmotion.com/images/product/large/bat03.jpg
This is what my battery packs connect to.
Indeed, I’m gonna take the 7.2v 1600mah battery ! And that switch looks awesome too I’m gonna take 2 of these. Just saw the specs of the batteries and the 6v 2800mah has a max discharge at 28A ! I think that pretty much cover the 32 possible servos connected to the board
Thanks again for everything ! 