Is it possible to control the base with a stepper motor and have it rotate 360 degrees via. control through a microcontroller…at the same time controlling the other servos -1 also via the microcontroller…???
Are you able to control the digital motors in the same way at the analog servo motors using the SSC-32 control board?
Thanks
I am not an expert in the field of servos, however I do believe stepper motors can be controlled in a similar way as servos, though it may be less acurate. For this you may need some encoder disks.
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dont quote me on any of this, if i know what Im talking about HURRAY. If not, I’ll have the satisfaction of knowing that I tried. 
I don’t know much about steppers, but I believe that you can make them “step” a given amount of “steps” without external sensors.
Something to do with the internal design of how the magnets lock together…
Or, so Wikipedia told me a while ago…
Anyhow, about the servos:
Yes, and no.
Yes, you send them exactly the same commands with exactly the same hardware.
The only difference in their control is that digital servos can independantly control themselves.
As long as they’re recieving power, they’ll hold whatever position they are at when you plug 'em in.
Analog servos won’t hold position unless you send them a repeated instruction to do so (PWM) every 20ms (50Hz).
Don’t worry, though.
The SSC-32 takes care of sending and resending whatever instructions you send to it.
So… if you’ve got an SSC-32, you’re covered, and you can pick either analog or digital without any difficulties.
If you’ve got a micro to control the servos, digital would be a better option.
That way, you won’t need to continually send them instructions every 20ms.
Im confused…are you able to control the analog servos using the SSC-32 board connected to the micro (M68HC11E9) and have code run on the micro to control the servos that are wired into the SSC board???
THANKS LOTS…
Yes.
Perhaps I was a bit unclear.
I was trying to outline the simplest way to do things.
Here’s what you’d do if you have a micro, an SSC-32, and an analog servo:
Connect the TX of the micro’s UART to the RX of the SSC-32 board.
You’ll need to remove/install the proper TTL, baudrate, and power jumpers on the SSC-32 (see the manual for the specifics).
Then, plug an analog servo into the SSC-32.
After everything is wired, controlling the servo is as simple as sending a string of characters to your micro’s UART.
So, you’d write a code that looked something like this:
Let's assume that you've set up your UART and that "TX_USART" is a simple function to send a string to the USART.
Here goes:
TX_USART (#11 P1500 #12 P1400 T1000 /r)
Simple enough…
“#11 P1500” tells the SSC-32 to move the servo connected to pin 11 to the center.
“#12 P1400” tells the SSC-ew to move the servo connected to pin 12 to a position a few degrees off of center.
“T1000” tells the SSC-32 to slow down each servo accordingly so that both servos spend exactly 1 second moving to the new position.
“/r” is carriage return in C, which the SSC-32 needs at the end of your instructions to know that it is indeed the end of your instructions.
Hopefully, an example of how it’s done will help assure you that you’ve got everything straight.
Hope this helps…
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