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Providing power to easy drivers and hobby servos? — Parallax Forums

Providing power to easy drivers and hobby servos?

GeeksGoneBadGeeksGoneBad Posts: 100
edited 2013-09-17 07:57 in General Discussion
Hey all - I have a project where I will have two Easydriver boards and two hobby servo motors and I want to drive all this from a Propeller Mini board

so in testing I've hooked up a wall wart to one of the easy drivers and pulled 5V off of that to power the Prop Mini

my question is what's the best way to get power from the wall wart to the other easydriver and two hobby servos - should I just splice the wires or is there a more elegant way?

Thanks!
Jamie

Comments

  • Alexander (Sandy) HapgoodAlexander (Sandy) Hapgood Posts: 360
    edited 2013-09-16 15:28
    My wife found me a pigtail that has a female connector connected to four mail connectors. I plug my wall adapter into the female connector and connect each of my four PPDBs. I checked with a multimeter and the grounds are common for all the boards. I double checked by wiring the output pin of one board to the LED circuit on one of the other boards. A high on the one board caused the LED on the other board to light up.

    She got the thing at a local electronics store and it wasn't very expensive. She's really good at finding things.


    Sandy
  • Duane DegnDuane Degn Posts: 10,588
    edited 2013-09-16 15:44
    So much depends on what current your wall-wart can supply and how much current your servos and motors will use. Servos draw a lot of power when the first start to move (a regular hobby servo can easily draw an amp when starting to move). This causes all sorts of trouble in electronic projects.

    If your servos are small and your wall-wart powerful (but not over the voltage your servos can handle) then you might be okay. I say splice (but use heat shrink over the joints) of buy or make a connector like Sandy uses.

    If your servos are powerful and your wall-wart not so much, then you might need a separate power supply for your motors.

    If the prop keeps reseting as servos or motors start to move, it's a sure sign you need a better power supply arrangement. If you have more than one power supply, make sure you have a common ground connection among them (connect all the "-" power lines together).
  • GeeksGoneBadGeeksGoneBad Posts: 100
    edited 2013-09-16 15:48
    Thanks guys - I can chose a wall wart that fits for sure but wasn't sure if splicing was just too lazy :)
  • NWCCTVNWCCTV Posts: 3,629
    edited 2013-09-16 19:38
    pigtail that has a female connector connected to four mail connectors
    These are usually used for powering up to 4 CCTV cameras at a time. You can get them at pretty much any store or web site that carries CCTV equipment.
  • RDL2004RDL2004 Posts: 2,554
    edited 2013-09-17 07:57
    These are usually used for powering up to 4 CCTV cameras at a time.

    Cool, I was going to build something like this in a box, but this would be a lot cheaper (and probably quicker considering how long it takes me to get around to doing something). I found a lot of them on eBay by searching for "DC power splitter". Many of the listings don't specify the actual connector size, but some do. I'm guessing 2.1mm is pretty much standard on CCTV equipment.
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