I am a new to creating my Pi powered project but I have an idea and I think my Zero would be perfect for. I want to drive three low powered servos (think needle indicators on a gauge) and one on/off button to activate the servos. Would the Automation pHAT work for this or should I go with the Explorer or Automation HAT?
Thanks!
I do not know whether you can control a motor from explorer or automation but if you can on explorer phat you should be able to control one from automation hat as they have a very similar feature set.
In conclusion if you can control a servo from explorer then you could probably do it if automation
It seems like you can not control a servo from explorer
( Trying to connect a servo to explorer hat )
Therefore you could probably not control one from automation so I would recommend something like the adafruit servondriver hat.
Ok cool. I’ll look into the Adafruit solution. Since I only needed 3 servos getting a HAT that can power 16 seemed like overkill but when in Rome…
You can drive servos directly from the GPIO of your Pi, using something like Servo Blaster: https://github.com/richardghirst/PiBits/tree/master/ServoBlaster
Although for sanity’s (read: not accidentally frying your Pi’s) sake, you should probably have some protection or isolation circuitry between servos and your Pi.
I thought that method only allowed for one servo but I stand corrected!
Using the GPIO is interesting. It would be one less power supply. I’ll just have to get some more knowledge about creating that power regulation/isolation from the servos.
Thanks