Hello. I am a noob currently working on a project while on quarantine which enables my five bedroom window blinds to open and close on a real time clock. My main components consists of an arduino uno, a PCA9685 PWM servo driver for my 5 servos, 2 buttons, a DS3231 clock, and two 5V power sources. At this moment, only 4/5 of the blinds work and the fifth one stalls. As you can see in the video, this is because of the length of the wires from the micro-controller to the 5th motor (Ohm's Law). I can't really figure out a way to get the last motor running. Any ideas? The arduino is centered directly in the middle of all the blinds so I really move it more and I cant remove any more wires to shorten the length to the fifth motor. I tried a 9V power source to the servo driver and it works, however I read that it can damage the motors and arduino. Would it actually damage them? Please help, Thanks.
Your wiring seems to be made of lots of short sections connected together - every joint in the string
will add significant contact resistance - you definitely need proper cabling. Do you know how much
copper is in those wires you are using?
Hello, thanks for the response. I am using wires similar to these :
Im not sure how much copper is in the wires im using. Would you recommend any wires / proper cabling that i should get to reduce the resistance? Thanks
I would use that style of thin cable for long runs, the resistance of the wire must be low as servos take an amp or so, which requires low resistance - thin wires are high resistance for long runs.
Find some hookup wire rated for several amps if you can. You can run the signal+ground as thin wires
back the microcontroller, but the supply current and ground should be rated for the power.