Pimoroni Announces Servo 2040 Servo Motor Controller:
Although it's slightly weird-looking, we're fairly sure that the image above is not an April Fool prank. UK-based seller of useful things Pimoroni has taken to Twitter to announce the Servo 2040, an 18-channel servo controller "for making things with lots of moving parts".
Servo 2040, as you might expect, is a standalone servo controller making use of the RP2040 microcontroller chip seen in the Raspberry Pi Pico. There are enough pre-soldered pin headers to connect up to 18 servos, current monitoring functionality to keep an eye on power consumption, and six addressable LEDs for visual feedback. You also get pin headers for up to six analog sensors for checking that you're not applying too much pressure to your test subject's head.
[...] Measuring just 62mm x 42mm x 12mm, the Servo 2040 is available now from the Pimoroni website, shipping worldwide. You can also purchase servos, including some that are Lego-compatible to your order, as well as batteries and cables, from the same site.
As a constructor myself, I often use servos to provide controllable movement in my various projects. Usually I rarely use more than half a dozen or so and more commonly only 2 or 3 so I do not see a personal need for a board capable of controlling 18! But I am sure that some constructors will.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Snotnose on Monday April 04 2022, @09:39PM
Before I retired I was an embedded device driver guy 50% of the time. I saw a lot of funny hardware, but as long as I got a register map and timing info I didn't care what it looked like or what it did, it made me money.
Of course I'm against DEI. Donald, Eric, and Ivanka.
(Score: 2) by krishnoid on Monday April 04 2022, @10:28PM
If you can get the cables all in the right configuration, you could connect every phalange or knuckle [emedicinehealth.com] on a VR glove something like this one [youtu.be].
(Score: 2) by MIRV888 on Monday April 04 2022, @11:03PM
This is going to be great. A howitzer, a chainsaw, some plutonium, vx, and rotten eggs.
Thank you Apple.
(Score: 4, Informative) by Rich on Tuesday April 05 2022, @12:29AM (1 child)
Wrong expectations. I somehow expected a servo motor controller. Like those 3-phase AC motors used in CNC spindles which need sinusoidal control of driver FETs. This is "just" an 18 output PWM controller for those servos like in RC aircraft, where they put the 2040's PIOs to use as PWM in addition to the hard-cored PWMs. As I'm not currently developing a Battle Mecha Suit, I'll pass this time. :)
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Tuesday April 05 2022, @08:00PM
Well I found the wording very clear.
Although that could be due to the fact that my Battle Mecha Suit is about halfway done!
(Score: 2) by sonamchauhan on Tuesday April 05 2022, @04:30AM
Could be useful for flapping-wing flying machines ... ornithopters
(Score: 1) by bobmorning on Tuesday April 05 2022, @06:14PM (1 child)
I see they include C and MicroPython libraries and you can control 18 servos.
What's the advantage over using an Mega that control control 48 with the Servo.h library?
I'm a bit lost on the advantage. Any subject matter experts care to opine?
Bob
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 05 2022, @08:53PM
Hey Bob,
Once upon a time a decade and change ago, a team I was on prototyped a ~50 servo project (modular art piece, each of two pieces was 12 servo pairs for 24 servos). TFA (er, TFTwitterlink?) says this board gives powered servo control, exactly what we needed. At the time our needs couldn't be easily + cheaply met by off the shelf controllers so we built our own. The custom printing of our PCB was more than the entire cost for this! So we'd definitely have saved person-days of work (by senior EEs who designed servo controllers by day, so free-to-us but a heavy opportunity cost!) and hundreds of dollars by using four-ish of these in the prototype.
According to https://www.arduino.cc/reference/en/libraries/servo/ [arduino.cc] the Mega can only control up to 12 servos, and I haven't checked specs but I suspect it'd need a separate power board.