USB serial servo micro controller example

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Here’s a link to a video I made to demonstrate how to get the the serial servo controller working: http://www.computersciencevideos.org/New-Videos/Pololu-Micro-Serial-Servo-Controller-with-a-Mac-USB. It took me a couple hours to figure this all out and I thought this video might save others some time. I control the servo controller from my Mac using a USB serial cable (like you would use for a terminal emulator for a Raspberry Pi - see the end of this video http://www.computersciencevideos.org/Raspberry-Pi/Raspberry-Pi-Setup). I use Java and some gnu libraries to write to the serial port.

The Pololu people tell me there is a better controller - Maestro servo controller. I haven’t experimented with that yet, but I look forward to getting one and playing with it.

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Hello, shallada.

Thanks for sharing your experience with us; it might be useful to someone who already has a Micro Serial Servo Controller and wants to connect it to a PC. Is your code available to download somewhere? (For anyone who is just getting started, we recommend using a Maestro instead.)

However, one thing I felt that your video doesn’t explain clearly is that you need to use a USB-to-serial adapter, such as this one that we sell. It looks like you’re using a USB to TTL Serial Cable or something similar, right? Even though it looks like a regular USB cable, it actually contains a converter chip inside the USB plug, and you can’t just cut up a regular cable and use it the same way.

- Kevin