This may belong more in the "Motors, Mechanics, and Power" forum but I was unsure as this is for projects. I am wanting to build something that would run multiple servo motors and I'm having a hard time with power requirements needed for all this. I am a newbie and after playing around with 2-3 servos and realizing I did not have power to do what was needed, I did some impulse buying and purchased a Li-Ion 7.4V 2200mAh Rechargeable Battery w/ PCB, and also purchased a Pololu Adjustable 4-12V Step-Up/Step-Down Voltage Regulator S18V20ALV voltage adjuster as I knew the cheap servos I have run nominal off of 5.2 V. This regulator shows that it can max output around 2A, the battery from what I can find shows it can output a max of 4A. These servos also take around 550 mA, so that would mean I can only run around 3 servos off of this setup? I don't have a good grasp on power consumption in general, would buying something like the Adafruit Motor/Stepper/Servo v2 in conjunction with my Arduino Mega R3 a good thought? This Adafruit module seems expensive to only be able to run 2 stepper motors, I figured there would be a much cheaper way but maybe I am clueless.
Edit -- after browsing a little more, I did find the Adafruit 16-Channel 12-bit PWM/Servo Driver which would be what I'm looking for, although reading about this still confuses me on the power requirements, as it states a good source of power would be a 5V 2A power supply, how would that be possible if you're running up to 16 servo motors.
Your (unspecified) servos might be drawing more than 550mA on startup.
Good thing is that servos only draw significant current when moving (or trying to).
A Mega can control AFAIK 48 servos directly (without any shield).
An Uno is limited to 12.
"This Adafruit module seems expensive to only be able to run 2 stepper motors"
I thought you were asking about servos.
Leo..
Wawa:
Your (unspecified) servos might be drawing more than 550mA on startup.
Good thing is that servos only draw significant current when moving (or trying to).
A Mega can control AFAIK 48 servos directly (without any shield).
An Uno is limited to 12.
"This Adafruit module seems expensive to only be able to run 2 stepper motors"
I thought you were asking about servos.
Leo..
They're SG90 long runner KY66 servos. And I do suppose that makes sense as they only draw that current when moving. So if I wanted more than 3 to run simultaneously I would need something that can output over 2A correct? And yeah not sure why I threw that stepper motor info in there, it said they could run servos as well but didn't give a number so I defaulted to thinking it would only do 2 servos as well, shouldn't have assumed anything.
Copy that, thank you! I may need to get a new regulator, I was just messing with the pololu and blew a capacitor and now the potentiometer is not working, great, now a few more days wait until I can start messing around again. Just to confirm, the stall current is not the current pull when the motor is not moving correct?