Micro Maestro "startup" behavior questions

I have a Micro Maestro and it appears to work just fine, for the most part matching the description in the User’s Guide. However, there is at least one area where I either don’t understand what the Guide says, or the controller is behaving differently than what the guide says.

Pages 5 and 21 seem to suggest that if the Control Center “On startup or error” channel setting is set to ‘Off’ the servo turns off, i.e., gets no signal and thus does not move. If the setting is set to a value, e.g. 1500.00, the servo will be commanded to go to that position. Further, the Guide says “On startup, there are no speed or acceleration limits”. What I have experienced over a period of weeks of testing is somewhat different.

When I leave the setting ‘Off’ (the default), unfortuantely the servo does move, at full speed and acceleration, to a location that appears to be 1/2 way between the minimum and maximum settings. This seems inconsistent with what the Guide says. What am I doing wrong?

In both cases, afterwards, as the Guide appears to suggest, further movement does take place at the speed and acceleration as in the channel settings.

Is there a way to ensure a servo does not move when the controller gets powered on or settings get changed? Ideally, I’d like to get the controller powered, turn on servo power and get no servo movement. Then I’d want to apply settings to a channel, min, max, speed, acceleration and then set a target. I really want to do it programmatically, but so far, I’ve been unable to do it even with the Control Center. Help!

Hello.

A Maestro channel should not be sending any signals on startup if its “On startup or error” setting is configured to “Off”. The movement you are seeing could be the natural behavior of the servos themselves when they are initially powered. You can see if that is the case for your servos by connecting the power supply to each servo directly (with no signal wire). If the servos do not move when powered directly from the supply, can you post your Maestro settings file? You can save the settings file in the Maestro Control Center by selecting File->Save settings file.

- Amanda