The servo motor differs from ordinary motor in that it has
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A DC motor has a two wire connection. All drive power is supplied over these two wires—think of a light bulb. When you turn on a DC motor, it just starts spinning round and round. Most DC motors are pretty fast, about 5000 RPM (revolutions per minute).
With the DC motor, its speed (or more accurately, its power level) is controlled using a technique named pulse width modulation, or simply PWM. This is idea of controlling the motor’s power level by strobing the power on and off. The key concept here is duty cycle—the percentage of “on time” versus“off time.” If the power is on only 1/2 of the time, the motor runs with 1/2 the power of its full-on operation.
If you switch the power on and off fast enough, then it just seems like the motor is running weaker—there’s no stuttering. This is what PWM means when referring to DC motors. The Handy Board’s DC motor power drive circuits simply switch on and off, and the motor runs more slowly because it’s only receiving power for 25%, 50%, or some other fractional percentage of the time.
A servo motor is an entirely different story. The servo motor is actually an assembly of four things: a normal DC motor, a gear reduction unit, a position-sensing device (usually a potentiometer—a volume control knob), and a control circuit.
The function of the servo is to receive a control signal that represents a desired output position of the servo shaft, and apply power to its DC motor until its shaft turns to that position. It uses the position-sensing device to determine the rotational position of the shaft, so it knows which way the motor must turn to move the shaft to the commanded position. The shaft typically does not rotate freely round and round like a DC motor, but rather can only turn 200 degrees or so back and forth.
With the DC motor, its speed (or more accurately, its power level) is controlled using a technique named pulse width modulation, or simply PWM. This is idea of controlling the motor’s power level by strobing the power on and off. The key concept here is duty cycle—the percentage of “on time” versus“off time.” If the power is on only 1/2 of the time, the motor runs with 1/2 the power of its full-on operation.
If you switch the power on and off fast enough, then it just seems like the motor is running weaker—there’s no stuttering. This is what PWM means when referring to DC motors. The Handy Board’s DC motor power drive circuits simply switch on and off, and the motor runs more slowly because it’s only receiving power for 25%, 50%, or some other fractional percentage of the time.
A servo motor is an entirely different story. The servo motor is actually an assembly of four things: a normal DC motor, a gear reduction unit, a position-sensing device (usually a potentiometer—a volume control knob), and a control circuit.
The function of the servo is to receive a control signal that represents a desired output position of the servo shaft, and apply power to its DC motor until its shaft turns to that position. It uses the position-sensing device to determine the rotational position of the shaft, so it knows which way the motor must turn to move the shaft to the commanded position. The shaft typically does not rotate freely round and round like a DC motor, but rather can only turn 200 degrees or so back and forth.
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