Arduino beating up my servos

Other Hardware Motors, Mechanics, Power and CNC
1

Previously, I had some code that worked fine with the servos. Then I dropped the Arduino board (about 3 feet onto wood floor)... it looks fine and can connect to computer but when I plugged in my servo, the servo moves all the way to one side and continues to grind until I remove the connection from the pin. This happens with any servo (I have 3) and it happens with any pin that is attached to in my program. For instance, if I have code:

Servo trigger; // trigger servo
void setup(){
trigger.attach(8);
}

it will freak out when I plug into pin 8 (if I change code to 7, then it freaks out only with 7).

I also dropped the battery (6V 4.5 Ah) but it also looks fine.

Again, everything worked great before I dropped the board and battery. Any ideas?

...Michael

2

I wonder if something damaged the crystal and you're getting the wrong clock speed. I would not think so because the serial baud rate would be off b the same amount and uploads would stop working. Are you sure you didn't add anything to your code around the time of the accident?

Try some of the servo example sketches to see if they behave normally. If so, it's your code.

3

did you connect the ground pin on the arduino with the ground on the battery?
i spent an afternoon in frustration because of a tiny thing like that

4

A servo running against the hard stop means either mal formed timing signals or possibly your wiring is now incorrect.

5

Thanks everyone... fgdowns, it indeed was that I hadn't connected the ground pin to battery.