Using 4 servos W/Arduino Uno and Adafruit Motor/Stepper/Serv

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Corross
 
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Using 4 servos W/Arduino Uno and Adafruit Motor/Stepper/Serv

Post by Corross »

Hello all,

I am brand new to the wonderful world of electronics and I might be asking a hopeful question here. I'll give you a bit of back story, I have purchased the Arduino Uno R3, Adafruit Wave Shield for Arduino Kit - v1.1, Adafruit 16-Channel 12-bit PWM/Servo Shield - I2C interface and Adafruit Motor/Stepper/Servo Shield for Arduino v2 Kit - v2.3. I need to be able to control 4 servos and play sounds.

My original plan was to have:
Adafruit 16-Channel 12-bit PWM/Servo Shield - on top of
Adafruit Wave Shield for Arduino Kit - v1.1 - on top of
Arduino Uno R3

However I did not realise until after I finished soldering the Adafruit 16-Channel 12-bit PWM/Servo Shield that the Adafruit Wave Shield is not stack-able. Rather than de-solder the servo shield, I was thinking my new plan could be:
Adafruit Wave Shield for Arduino Kit - v1.1 - on top of
Adafruit Motor/Stepper/Servo Shield for Arduino v2 - on top of
Arduino Uno R3

What I need to know is, can I use the servo connections on the Arduino Uno R3 and the Adafruit Motor/Stepper/Servo Shield for Arduino v2 to connect 4 servos?

Any assistance or advice would be greatly appreciated,

Thanks,
Ross

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adafruit_support_mike
 
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Re: Using 4 servos W/Arduino Uno and Adafruit Motor/Stepper/

Post by adafruit_support_mike »

The Motor Shield only has connections for two servos, and those don't use any of the hardware on the shield. They just break out pins used by the Arduino Servo library.

Using the Servo Controller is a better solution for what you want to do. The Arduino Servo library takes over some of the microcontrollers internal clocks to generate the pulses that tell the servos what to do, and the Wave Shield wants a lot of the microcontroller's time so it can read information from the SD card and write that information to the DAC. The two are very likely to trip over each other.

The Servo Controller handles all the signal timing internally, so you only need to tell it what kind of pulse to generate and it does the rest.

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Corross
 
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Re: Using 4 servos W/Arduino Uno and Adafruit Motor/Stepper/

Post by Corross »

adafruit_support_mike wrote: The Servo Controller handles all the signal timing internally, so you only need to tell it what kind of pulse to generate and it does the rest.
So if I go with:
Adafruit Wave Shield for Arduino Kit - v1.1 - on top of
Adafruit 16-Channel 12-bit PWM/Servo Shield - on top of
Arduino Uno R3

Would this facilitate my needs?

Apologies for my lack of understanding, as I mentioned I am brand new to this :)

Thank you for you hasty reply by the way!

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adafruit_support_bill
 
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Re: Using 4 servos W/Arduino Uno and Adafruit Motor/Stepper/

Post by adafruit_support_bill »

You will probably want to put the servo shield on top of the wave shield for easy access to the servo headers. And you will need to build the Wave shield with stacking headers so you can stack on top of it. https://www.adafruit.com/product/85

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Corross
 
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Re: Using 4 servos W/Arduino Uno and Adafruit Motor/Stepper/

Post by Corross »

adafruit_support_bill wrote:You will probably want to put the servo shield on top of the wave shield for easy access to the servo headers. And you will need to build the Wave shield with stacking headers so you can stack on top of it. https://www.adafruit.com/product/85
I was under the impression the wave shield was not stack-able. I was not able to work out how I could stack it (granted I was in a bit of a rush at the time). Are you saying the wave shield is stack-able?

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adafruit_support_mike
 
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Re: Using 4 servos W/Arduino Uno and Adafruit Motor/Stepper/

Post by adafruit_support_mike »

There's no problem stacking a Servo Shield on top of a Wave Shield electrically.

Mechanically, you'd need to trim the thumbwheel that controls volume or find a smaller wheel.

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adafruit_support_bill
 
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Re: Using 4 servos W/Arduino Uno and Adafruit Motor/Stepper/

Post by adafruit_support_bill »

If you want to stack anything on top of the Servo shield, you would need to build it with both stacking headers for stacking and right-angle servo headers to avoid interference with the servo cabling. It is a workable arrangement - just not very convenient.

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