Power requiremens of 12 hobby servos.

Forum 2005-2010 (read only) Hardware Interfacing
1

Hi all,

First post on this great community. I have read around and understand the need for an external power supply to run muliple servos, however I cannot work out the rating that supply would need to be in order to safely run 12 turnigy TG9E hobby servos. They are being used to run a model of an animated building facade and will be unlikely to be under very much load.

Any help or suggesions with this would be really appreciated.

Thanks

Paul

2

A quick google search turned up a spec for a similar servo that puts the worst-case current at 600mA per servo. Since you say they'll be lightly loaded, figure about 1/2 that.

You want to make sure the power supply can comfortably supply the current needed by the average number of servos you'll have moving at any given moment.

But you can expect that there will be a brief period during system initialization when all the servos are running at once, until the system is sending them all position info and they settle there. So I'd look for a good-quality regulated 6V supply rated at least 3A: more is better, but a 3A it should handle any small, brief overload during start-up.

3

Thanks for the response, I'll have a look around and see what I can find.

4

I'll have a look around and see what I can find.

If you have difficulty finding a supply, don't take my 6V suggestion as hard-and-fast: hobby servos are not very fussy about their power supply, and you're running light loads, so anything from about 5-7V should be fine. You could also use multiple supplies if you have easy access to lower-current ones. But be sure they're regulated: the unregulated ones often put out as much as 150% of their nominal voltage when lightly loaded.

5

Cross-posting:
http://www.arduino.cc/cgi-bin/yabb2/YaBB.pl?num=1268391869