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[on:]

Hi All,

Just a quick question, is it possible to burn a servos electronics by plugging it in the wrong way? I have four cont. rotation servos which were working perfectly a half hour ago, two of which now don't work. One of them constantly spins regardless  of signal etc. and the other is just dead.
They are plugged into a stripboard daughterbaord providing 6v in and signal lines out to the arduino. I plugged these two in the wrong way round, could this have done/blow/shorted something?
I've just rebuilt the daughterbaord and this seems to work perfectly. The two working servos I have will work when plugged into any input. I'm stumped!

Thanks in advance!

[Reply #1 on:]

I would say it would depend on the servo connector pinout, and how you are hooking it up (what does your connector's pinout, that you plugged into wrong - look like?). It would also depend on if the servo has any protections against incorrect pin assignments. For instance, if there isn't any reverse-voltage protection on the servo's driver board, and the +/- voltage rails are on the outside pins of the connector (with the center pin for signal/control) - flipping the connector around improperly could reverse the rails, leading to all sorts of trouble. Applying positive voltage or ground to the signal line may or may not cause issues; grounding it likely wouldn't, but if its expecting a maximum of 5 volts, but you're overdriving the servo motor with 7 volts and the signal line comes in contact with that 7 volts - that may or may not be an issue (once again, depending on how the servo is designed to handle such a scenario). If you could tell us more about the servo (make and model #), plus the connectors involved and how you connected them right vs. wrong - that could go a long way to helping to answer the questions you have.

[Reply #2 on:]

The typical servo connector is signal/power/ground. If this is reversed to a normal three pin servo header, the servo probably won't be damaged. If the servo is connected differently, then it might be damaged.

[Reply #3 on:]

Hi,
I'm using this servo SM-S4303R. There is a link to the datasheet included. They're plugged into the board below which connects to arduino.

Had all four servos working, unplugged them, mounted them and tested and one was not working, due to being plugged in incorrectly. So, to see if this was the case, I plugged second one in same way to see what  would happpen... Both don't work now.. I'm fairly certain I had Signal --> 6V and +Ve --> V- . Would 6v up the signal line cause this?
I've inlcluded some pics so you can see what I'm on about!

@zoomkat
I would have thought this too although it seems likely I have somehow blown the servos.  

Servo datasheet... http://www.oomlout.com/DATASHEETS/SERV-03.pdf

[Reply #4 on:]

is it possible to burn a servos electronics by plugging it in the wrong way?

I'm afraid so, I fried one of mine last week by getting power & ground the wrong way round.

[Reply #5 on:]

Thanks guys. Any use for servos with no fuctioning electronics?

[Reply #6 on:]

Thanks guys. Any use for servos with no fuctioning electronics?

Now you have a geared motor.

[Reply #7 on:]

Thanks guys. Any use for servos with no fuctioning electronics?

http://www.openservo.com/
Add better electronics!