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You're reading from  Arduino Robotic Projects

Product typeBook
Published inAug 2014
Reading LevelIntermediate
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ISBN-139781783989829
Edition1st Edition
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Richard Grimmett
Richard Grimmett
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Richard Grimmett

Richard Grimmett has more fun that should be allowed working on robotics projects while teaching Computer Science and Electrical Engineering at Brigham Young University Idaho. He has a Bachelors and Masters degree in Electrical Engineering and a PhD in Leadership Studies. He also has 26 years of experience in the Radar and Telecommunications industries, and even has one of the original brick phones. He has written books on the basics of using the BeagleBone Black for robotics projects, and another for the Raspberry PI and yet another for the Arduino.
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The basics of a servo motor


Before you begin, you'll need some background on servo motors. Servo motors are somewhat similar to DC motors; however, there is an important difference. While DC motors are generally designed to move in a continuous way—rotating 360 degrees at a given speed—servos are generally designed to move within a limited set of angles. In other words, in the DC motor world, you generally want your motors to spin with continuous rotation speed that you control. In the servo motor world, you want your motor to move to a specific position that you control.

Controlling servos is fairly simple. The device has three wires connected to it: one for the ground connection, one for the drive voltage, and the third is a control signal that expects a pulse-width modulated (PWM) signal. The signal is a square wave that is turned on and off at a set rate, normally at around 500 Hz. The ratio of the length of the time the signal is on to the time the signal is off determines the desired...

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Arduino Robotic Projects
Published in: Aug 2014Publisher: ISBN-13: 9781783989829

Author (1)

author image
Richard Grimmett

Richard Grimmett has more fun that should be allowed working on robotics projects while teaching Computer Science and Electrical Engineering at Brigham Young University Idaho. He has a Bachelors and Masters degree in Electrical Engineering and a PhD in Leadership Studies. He also has 26 years of experience in the Radar and Telecommunications industries, and even has one of the original brick phones. He has written books on the basics of using the BeagleBone Black for robotics projects, and another for the Raspberry PI and yet another for the Arduino.
Read more about Richard Grimmett