Tips on using a servo motor for moving a hinge

Technical
1

Hey all!
My team wants to use a servo motor to activate a hinge to move a small metal plate. I was thinking of using a coprocessor (raspberry pi) to control said servo with an external power supply and an Adafruit Motor HAT. Is there any better/simpler solution? It would be convenient to use said raspberry pi as we’d like to use vision processing.

The motor we’re using for now is the VEX 3-wire servo.

2

Plug the servo into one the Rio’s PWM ports

3

is that it? would the roborio give it power and also would we be able to actually control it or would it be continuous.

4

yes

yes

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5

thanks! didn’t know it was that simple. :sweat_smile:

6

If you need more power than RoboRio can provide you can get one of these:

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7

You should read the robot construction rules fully, specifically R506 and R712. The configuration you are proposing is illegal if I understand your post correctly. The servo must be controlled by a PWM port on the roborio and it must be powered by the RoboRIO, a Servo Power Module, or a WCP Spartan sensor board (not sold anymore).

If it’s a light duty servo, powering off the roborio should be fine. I believe it handles up to 2.2A of current (total across all pins). If it’s heavy duty, you should use a Servo Power Module.

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