Hello, I’m currently developing a robot arm, using an Arduino nano and a Pca9685, connected to the Pca9685 is a hiwonder 20kg servo motor. How do I power this motor, I understand that it needs 6 to 8 volts to run but I don’t have any thing that has that many volt I had the rest of my servos connected to a elegloo power supply. I also have a question that I’m too scared to test, if I were to put a 12 V into the elegloo power supply, could I use the VIN pin to power, the servo? I need a fast way to power the servo without buying anything new because I don’t have enough money for my project at the moment.
Thank you for reading
You don't want to power the Servo through the arduino.
The safe way is to either use a proper 6–8 V power source capable of 2–5 A (depending on the servo load) or temporarily power the servo from a battery pack with the correct voltage and capacity.
Never try to run it through the Nano or PCA9685 logic pins, and never put 12 V into the servo directly
What is the current requirement for the motor? Saying it is 20kg doesn't say anything about its power consumption.
How much can you afford? I did a quick search on Amazon and got 6V and similar power supplies for £10 to £20 (I am in the UK). Is this outside your budget? Do make sure that if you buy a power supply it is capable of maybe at least 50% more current than the maximum the servo needs.
Maybe too late for this project but I suggest you make a habit of collecting old power supplies from used electronic equipment. If you do that you'll probably never need to buy a power supply again.
You can try but it will not work unless you have some shorts on the Arduino. VIN (Voltage IN) is a power input to the board before the onboard regulator, not an output.
