Introduction
A servo motor is a rotary actuator that allows for precise control of angular position, velocity, and acceleration. It consists of a suitable motor coupled to a sensor for position feedback.
evive has two dedicated servo motor outputs pins.
Controlling Servo Angle
Servo is controlled on the concept of PWM (Pulse Width Modulation). The refresh interval (the minimum time to refresh servos in microseconds) is 20000, which means that the servo is refreshing at a frequency of 50Hz. For most of the servos, a certain range of PWM correspond to the range of angle servo can rotate. Minimum pulse width is the shortest time for the pulse has been HIGH and the maximum pulse width is the longest time for which the pulse is HIGH. Hence if the range of motor angular position is from 0 to 180, the minimum pulse width corresponds to 0 and the maximum pulse width corresponds to 180.
Signal pin of servo 1 is connected to digital pin 44 and servo 2 is connected to digital pin 45.
Circuit Diagram
Controlling servo through the evive menu
You can directly connect servo and control angle using inbuilt potentiometers using the evive menu. You just have to navigate to control submenu, select servo and then select which servo you want to control (Servo 1 or Servo 2 or both servo).
Controlling servo using servo library
There is a servo library which can be used to control the servo motor. The available functions are provided in the table below:
| Function | Return data type | Comment |
| attach(int pin); | unit8_t | Attach the given pin to the next free channel, sets pinMode, returns channel number or 0 if failure |
| attach(int pin, int min, int max); | unit8_t | As above but also sets min and max values for writes |
| detach(); | void | |
| write(int value); | void | If value is < 200 its treated as an angle, otherwise as pulse width in microseconds |
| writeMicroseconds(int value); | void | Write pulse width in microseconds |
| read(); | Integer | Returns current pulse width as an angle between 0 and 180 degrees |
| readMicroseconds(); | Integer | Returns current pulse width in microseconds for this servo (was read_us() in first release) |
| attached(); | bool | Return true if this servo is attached, otherwise false |
Example
The sample code is given below which uses the library:
