Connecting motors and servos to CLUE board

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geogriff
 
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Connecting motors and servos to CLUE board

Post by geogriff »

Hi, I am doing an online robotics class using the CLUE board. I need to connect 2 motors and 2 servos to the clue.
1. What is the easiest way to do this?
2. Can I connect a motor and servo wing to the I2C pins?
3. Will the CLUE work with the micro:bit Crickit board?
4. Does adafrut have any STEMMA boards for servos and motors in the pipeline?
Because the class is online most students do not have access to soldering equipment and I really need a plug and play solution for motors and servos.
Thanks in advance.

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kevinjwalters
 
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Re: Connecting motors and servos to CLUE board

Post by kevinjwalters »

As you probably know, the CLUE wouldn't be capable of driving the motors directly and I'd imagine the 3V pad isn't suitable for powering anything bar the tiniest, single, unloaded servo and only servos designed to be powered off 3.3V. The diagram at the top of https://learn.adafruit.com/adafruit-clue/pinouts says absolute maximum of 400mA on 3.3v output which presumably refers to the 3V pad and no other devices in use (I've seen comments about the micro:bit struggling to do music on piezo and a servo together).

For 3, I see two existing posts on CLUE vs Adafruit CRICKIT for micro:bit (there are three versions of the Crickit for different microcontroller boards):

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geogriff
 
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Re: Connecting motors and servos to CLUE board

Post by geogriff »

Thanks for the reply Kevin,
I will look further into using the Crickit board.

I'm still curious (Q2) about connecting feather wings (motor and/or servo) to the CLUE via the I2C. I'm assuming, since the both of these wings are controlled over I2C that I could connect the boards via the STEMMA connector and would use the same commands and libraries that I would if I was using an nRF840 feather.
Thanks in advance.
Tim

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kevinjwalters
 
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Re: Connecting motors and servos to CLUE board

Post by kevinjwalters »

There's a lot of servo/motor control boards out there but I'm just playing with a new Cytron edu:bit at the moment and I realised it can control 3 servos and two 5v motors. It's designed for education (you can see in Cytron's EDU:BIT Kit Unboxing (YouTube) it has buttons and LEDs to let the user check motor functionality without needing code) for a young audience with MakeCode blocks but could be used beyond that. The board is fairly large even when the snap-off transducers come off (it has grove connectors for them and for i2c) so it wouldn't suit building small robots but they have a demo video which shows what can be done with the kit and a bit of cardboard ingenuity: Objects Counter with Mini Conveyor Using Edu:bit (YouTube). The conveyor belt they've built is a bit manic and could do with some gears! My afternoon task is to put together a quick CircuitPython library for the CLUE for this, all seems feasible so far. They are doing a bulk sale via a kickstarter campain (sic) at the moment so timescales may not be suitable for you.

BTW, as you probably know, continuous servos (like Continuous Rotation Micro Servo - FS90R) are another option for motors which would let you use a pure servo control board (no screwdriver required for connectors). And there's some kits to modify a standard servo to do linear things, e,g, the rack-based Kitronik Linear Actuator Kit.

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