Hi, I have adapted a small hobby servo to control the position of a 3/8 inch Ball valve by coupling the shafts. No problem. The ball valve is mounted in a vehicle and I need the position of the ball valve to vary according to vehicle speed. Vehicles have various types of sensors that measure speed.
The question is: " what is the best / cheapest way to integrate the servo control to respond to a vehicle speed signal?" Cheers R.
Hello, Rodney.
If you do not have a way to process the sensors and control the servo from the electronics on your vehicle, you can probably add a separate microcontroller to do that. If you can tell me more about the kind of signals your speed sensors output, I might have some suggestions.
Brandon
Thanks Brandon, I can use any suitable vehicle speed sensor that would assist the integration of the sensor output signals with the servo control signal. The vehicle is a prototype.
I can use any readily available sensor to observe a rotating part of the vehicle drivetrain [ for example].
I am not expert in electronics but able to set up basic hardware easily.
It had occurred to me that it might be possible to duplicate the servo control signals by a sensor observing a rotating disc/ gear/magnet attached to the vehicle drive system.
Does this prompt any suggestions in your mind? Thanks again. R
If you can use a rotary encoder (such as a quadrature encoder), you should be able to read those signals with an Arduino or Arduino-compatible board and control a servo from that. Using a rotary encoder Arduino library with the servo library should help simplify the programming. For an inexpensive, Arduino-compatible, programmable controller, you might consider our A-Star 32U4 Micro.
Brandon
Thanks again, yes I understand. I will get an Arduino Learning kit and hopefully be able to learn it
I will then get the other things you have mentioned. R