13 thoughts on “Simple Serial Servo Controller

  1. “There’s nothing quite like a nice, simple hack. This serial servo controller uses a PIC12C671 and a pair of resistors. Leaving out the power supply, that’s the lowest part count I’ve ever seen.”

    ..”_this_ servo controller”.. The “_this_” syndrome is almost as bad as the click _here_ syndrome.. Perhaps “This _servo_ _controller_ ..” would be better.. I think I’m just taking the piss though, and also I’ve had too many beers.. I’ll shut up now.

  2. I agree, the resistor between the PIC and the Servo is not required. Most Micro Controller manuals are geared toward the beginner, and have the resistor to protect the Micro against a miswire (accidentally hardwired to a power supply rail.)

    It should be trivial to write a timed routine in any modern language (C#, Java…) to toggle a pin on the Serial or Parallel port every 20mS. It may have some jitter, but it also has a zero parts count!

  3. I’ve built many serial servo controllers and you don’t need those resistors. All that is required is a PWM output to the control line of the servo. Thats a part count of two: servo and mcu.

  4. It is nice having such a low parts count, it really makes stuff compact and easy to build. But you just can’t beat the dedicated servo controller chip…especially if you don’t know how to program pics like me. I know all the syntax for java and perl and stuff, I just don’t have the creativity to make good programs, so having a dedicated part to do a job is still a high priority in my book.

  5. The 100 ohm resistor is ACTUALLY a good idea. They shape the pwm rising edge to prevent broadband noise on every rising and falling edge. Ever looked at the frequency spectrum of a pulse? Not pretty. It’s also a good idea to have because the servo can fail with a dead short to gnd which would pull more current through that little PIC pin damaging it. The Resistor limits the current in this situation saving the PIC.

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