random servos stop working until program restart

Other Hardware Motors, Mechanics, Power and CNC
1

Hey guys.

Im running 10 servos (5 pan, 5 tilt) for a sculptural installation. The pan motors are hiTec hs785hb's, and the tilts are hitec hs5665mh's.

9 of them are powered externally, and one (pan) is powered by the arduino mega's 5v. Also the arduino is powered by a 9v power supply (because i thought this may solve the problem).

The servos are controlled via processing, which communicates with arduino using the example in file/examples/firmata/servoFirmata.

When I run the program (in processing), everything works fine for anywhere between 5 and 15 minutes, until one or more of the pan motors stops moving. When I restart the processing program, everything works fine again. :~

Any suggestions what this might be?

thanks in advance.

2

Hi, Can you try to divide and conquer??

If you just click Reset on the Arduino do things start up again?

Can you put some blinks out to Pin 13 or other LED to show that the Adruino software is still running?

Can you "fake" the Processing code to not really send via serial, but keep running, and see if it ever hangs?

3

Thanks Terry, will try some of these.

Just to be clear, when you say click reset, do you mean on the computer or the reset button on the arduino?

4

do you mean on the computer or the reset button on the arduino?

I meant the Arduino.

But I may not understand how Arduino starts up in that situation with Firmata...