‘High Torque’ Servo arduino control

Other Hardware Motors, Mechanics, Power and CNC
1

I bought a Tower Pro MG995 servo for a school project; we needed a servo with more power than the crappy blue ones but I still wanted it to run off the arduino. Since it was rated at 5v I assumed it would work. Now, when it moves, it jolts then crashes the arduino and then stops.

At the moment I have it connected straight to 5v, gnd and pin 2. I’ve tried connecting the red and brown wires to a 5v power supply but it didn’t work at all. I tried connecting a 11.5v DC barrel plug to the arduino instead of the usb cable, and again it didn’t work at all.

What’s going wrong?

Update: now when I plug it into usb or dc, the servo keeps twitching every second and crashes the arduino every time, not letting it turn on.

2

The 5V pin on an Arduino cannot be used to power motors or servos.

Always use a separate power supply (a 4xAA battery pack will work for one or two servos) and connect the grounds.

3

Thanks mate, that’s worked. How would I go about using mains power to power my servos?

4

An MG995 takes far too much current to run from the Arduino 5V pin (as jremington says that's true for most servos and motors).

The 5V power supply might have worked if it is able to deliver enough current (2A would probably be enough) and if you had the negative connected to the Arduino ground as well as to the servo.

Steve