I'm new to the world of Arduino, and have just started to put together my first battery operated circuit on the UNO. I'm looking to power 10 micro servos, and have included the data sheet for them below. What kind of battery should I be using, and how powerful should it be? It's for the internals of a puppet, so I'm hoping to get something small and light. If you know of any UK based sellers that would be great!
From the research I've done, it seems I would potentially need something called a Ubec to bring the battery voltage and amps down to an Arduino friendly number, as high performance batteries with a voltage of 5 are hard to come by. So far I've looked into RC car batteries and Airsoft batteries, but I'm not 100% sure what I actually need
Many thanks in advance, and please ask my any questions if I'm missing something!
Easy. 10 servos times the 750ma stall current will tell you the maximum current your battery needs to supply. The actual continuous current all depends on the load you place on the servos. All this is right in the specs you provided.
so 7500ma was the right number? I felt like I was wrong after not finding any batteries under £70ish that could supply it! Any idea what kind of battery could supply that much at once? The hobby batteries I looked at barely had that much in amps.
This is approximately the maximum short term current that the battery can safely deliver, in terms of its capacity C, specified by the manufacturer in Ah or mAh.
Example: a 10C battery with C=3600 mAh (3.6 Ah) can supply 36 A, for brief periods.
4.8-6V batteries intended for electric RC vehicles are a popular choice.
Thank you, I'll try again with the RC vehicle batteries. Will my UNO be okay with that much current running through it? I'm still looking into things and find some people warning it could be an issue.
Sorry I should have clarified, I'm using the starter kit breadboard as my way of connecting everything together. All my test projects so far with 4 servos at most have just had the USB power, so I've not had to worry about overloading anything
Yes, you do have to worry about overloading the USB port. Four servos will do that, and potentially destroy your laptop or desktop.
Avoid kits and tutorials that suggest that to power servos from USB ports, or the Arduino 5V pin is OK. There are lots of them, and they give very bad advice. This forum is littered with sad stories resulting from following such advice.
How should I connect my servos if you don't mind me asking? I haven't come across any tutorials connecting the servos to power without going through an arduino/breadboard and I'd really appreciate getting to see one so I can go about my project in the right and safe way!
Thank you so much! I've managed to find this tutorial that completely stays off the breadboard, I'm currently working with it to add in my joystick and it'll be good to go. Just got to find a driver board that's local to me now
