So I’m trying to build an hexapod and for what I’ve seen almost everyone uses this servo controller board. I’m pretty new to this stuff so this may be an stupid question but why is it necessary? Couldn’t I just use an arduino mega to controll the hexapod?
You’ll find that the code needed for the controller, hexapod gait and managing the servos is quite sizeable. The SSC-32U takes care of managing the servos (repeating the servo signals to all servo motors).
A normal Arduino Uno / Duemilanove on its own doesn’t have enough space or time to do this all efficiently (at least not easily), so the servo control is offloaded.
An Arduino MEGA should be able to do it but it’s not well supported, so your code will need to take care of everything, including managing the servos and timing.
People use the SSC-32U with a BotBoarduino or normal Arduino because the code is essentially already created.