Okay, so I ordered the maestro 24 recently to be the brains of an autonomous hexapod robot. I am using 12 high torque metal gear servos for the locomotion of the robot. My concern is the draw of power from these servos. I noticed on the maestro 24 there were two spots for batteries, one was a 2 pin standard rc and the other looked to be where you attach two ends from a battery lead and screw it in place. My first question is can I use any battery as long as it’s 6v to power the servos? Even if that were to be a sealed lead-acid snowmobile starter battery? If not, then what batteries should I use for powering the servos for long periods of time, and which battery connection should I hook it to?
Hello.
You can power the servo power rails using a lead acid battery if it is an appropriate voltage for the servos. The servos will only draw as much current as they need. You will want to look at how much current your servos are rated for. High torque servos usually pull more current, and you might want to power them directly instead of through the power rails on the Maestro since their combined currents might be more than what the power rails can handle.
- Grant
Thank you Grant.
A follow up question though… To power the servos directly would I just only hook the signal wires to each channel in the maestro, and the positive and negative to a breadboard in a parallel circuit connected to the battery?
Yes, you would need to connect signal wires to each Maestro channel, and you should also connect each servo’s ground wire to the Maestro’s ground rail. You would then separately connect each servo’s power and ground wires directly to an appropriate power supply. I would not recommend using a bread board to distribute power since they are generally not appropriate for high currents. Instead, I recommend making direct connections using wires and connectors with suitable ratings.
- Grant