Servo sleep

Support Servo controllers and servos
1

I have the 6 channel maestro hooked up to a few servos and a button. I would like to figure out a way to put the servos to “sleep” while the maestro is waiting for a trigger from the button.

Is there a way to essentially tell maestro to stop sending signals/ power to the servos. I am hoping this will increase the life of my servos.

Thanks

2

Hello.

You can have the Maestro stop sending signals to a particular channel by sending a Set Target command with a target of “0”. Note that some digital servos will continue to hold their position even after they stop receiving signals. If this happens with your servos, then you would need to try a more complicated solution.

Brandon

3

Hi,

I think I’m doing it here but not positive. Does the code I have for setting the servos to 0 look correct or is there something that I am missing? I want the servos to stop receiving signal while the maestro waits for a push button trigger.
Capture|690x436

Thanks!

4

Hello.

That script should be setting the target of channels 1-4 to “0” while the input on channel 0 is high. So if you have channel 0 configured as an input and a button wired to it with a pull-up resistor (as described in the “Attaching Servos and Peripherals” section of the Maestro user’s guide), I would expect that part of the code to be working.

I am not sure what else is happening in your script, but you might want to try a very simple script just to test your servo’s reaction to the signal stopping. For example:

begin
  6000 1 servo   #set the servo to some initial position
  3000 delay     #wait for it to reach that position
  0 1 servo      #stop sending signals to servo
  quit	         #exit script
repeat

If your servo is still holding its position when this script ends, you will need to do something more complicated to make it stop, such as using an RC switch to toggle the servo power from the Maestro.

Brandon