Need a bit of help getting a potentiometer to control a servo.
first…i am a complete newbie at this…bear with me.
I followed the diagram in the user manual and I am able to see the slider move in the Maestro Control Center as I rotate the Potentiometer from side to side. (5K pot by the way if that matters)
But how do I connect the actual servo? (Newbie, I know.)
Wires are coming out of the Micro to the Pot via a breadboard.
I rotate knob and slider moves in Control center.
seems to work fine but I am lost on how to connect servo to this.
Being casual about if the value of the pot matters is not the attitude you want to have when dealing with electronics. It is often easy to break things, if you are not careful and don’t know what is going on.
Jan has been writing some blog posts that generally introduce servos which might interest to you:
The second post has cables that explains what the different colors on a servo cable mean. You need to connect the right cable to the right pin on the servo controller. You haven’t said what servo controller you are using, but I think I can deduce that you are using one of the Maestro servo controllers though. It would be nice if you were more explicit next time. If you are unsure of your wiring, you can always post some kind of schematic you’ve drawn (MSPaint works pretty well), and we can look it over.
Ryan,
sorry I dont have the level of experience necessary to adequately explain my question. certainly not “causal” about electronics, just a greenhorn. thats why i am asking.
I simply dont see how the servo is connected in the diagram in your manual explaining how to connect a pot for control. Yes I know what the wire colors reference.
And I am using a Micro Maestro as mentioned before.
The top of this user’s guide section explains how to connect a servo. Is there something about the explanation that is confusing to you? Each Maestro channel consists of three pins: signal, power, and ground. You can just plug your servo cable into the channel so that the proper connections are made. Note that you cannot use the same channel for your pot and a servo.
If the user’s guide isn’t clear to you, I’d like to understand the source of your confusion, which in turn would make it possible to better answer your questions.
By the way, there is a picture on the Maestro product page that shows the Micro Maestro with servos plugged into it.
Hello,
the servo connections are a breeze,no problem there. Its connecting a servo AND the pot that’s not clear.
Any photos of that connection would be helpful.
Section 7b of the users guide pot section has a photo/dwg that might help I think it shows channel 0 as the pot and you would connect your servos to channels 1-5
Ah ha.
Thanks Bobby.
I have seen that photo but didnt understand till now that I need to output the signal to a different channel. All makes sense now. My guess is that its done in the script.
You are correct I dont understand script very well. The examples and help from David got me through my problems. I believe you need to change the channel you are using for your pot to input in the control center, and your script needs to be looking for that input on that channel. I am using a button press, the sample script has the button on channel 1 and servo on channel 0. I could not get the button to work on channel 0 (Something I missed in the script and or controll center im sure)but I did get my servos to work on channels 2-5 with the input from channel 1
