I recently purchased 10 units of MG996R servo motor and the 16 channel 12-bit PWM/Servo driver from Adafruit for a small project. I confirmed that all of my servos are functional and that my code is correct. My issue is that there seems to be a limit on the number of servos I can run. With 4AA batteries, I can power about 3 of the MG996R servos. Starting with the 4th one, they stop moving. I supposed that the current drawn from the servos is high, so I tried powering the servos by providing two 4AA batteries in parallel (8AA). This appeared to have increased the number of servos I can run. But after a few minutes, the servos stop responding and I have to disconnect the power for a while before the servos respond again. I read on Adafruit that I may need to add a capacitor to the PWM/servo drive if I have multiple servos. Is this my problem or I just need to provide more power? Why do the servos seem to respond initially but stop moving after a while? Thanks in advance.
1 Answer 1
If Adafruit say to use the kit to drive multiple servos you need to add a cap and without the cap you can't drive multiple servos, then yes your first port of call should be to add the cap.
However that's probably not all that's wrong. If it runs for a bit before dying then it could be a number of causes.
- Not enough power.
- Something is overheating.
Code problem.
- Use a decent transformer with more than enough amps to power your motors.
- Use your nose, does something smell hot? If you use your fingers you will get burnt!
- We can't fix invisible code.