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Servos seem to be the go-to option when adding motors to hobby projects. They’re easy to hack for continuous rotation for use in a robot, but with the control board intact they are fairly accurate for position-based applications. But do you know how the hardware actually works? [Rue Mohr] recently published an article that looks [...]

Tags:  option servos servo hobby-projects continuous-rotation inner-workings how-to  

There’s a lot of cool stuff brewing on the Hackaday forums. [igor_b] posted a project he’s been working on that uses a servo, motor, wine glass, and a balloon to create a one-glass armonica. A glass harmonica is a series of nested bowls turned on a spindle that is played by running your finger along the rims [...]

Tags:  glass servo wine music-of-the-angels glass-harmonica glass-armonica musical hacks  

[Jim] has an old Android phone he’d like to use as a Robot brain. It’s got a lot of the things you’d want in a robot platform; WiFi, Bluetooth, a camera, an accelerometer, etc. But he needed some way to make the mobile, mobile. What he came up with is a chassis with servos that [...]

Tags:  servo robot control jim robot-platform servo-control accelerometer android hacks  

For one reason or another, a lot of Hackaday readers are doing stuff with servos as of late. Here’s a few servo hacks that made their way into our tip line over the past day or so: USB servo controller and a Stewart Platform [Patricio] needed a way to control a bunch of servos for [...]

Tags:  way servos servo stewart-platform patricio servo-controller tip-line Hardware  

Unhappy with the 120 degree range of movement for this digital servo motor [Malte] set out to expand its flexibility. He settled upon a hack that alters the feedback potentiometer in order to give the motor a wider range (translated). The test video (embedded after the break) shows tick marks for before and after his alterations. [...]

Tags:  servo motor range malte digital-servo servo-motor degree-range misc hacks  

Servo control is good, but wireless control is even better. This hack by [PyroElectro Tutorials] shows you how to do this wirelessly using two Xbee modules. There’s also a great example in the video after the break of this “hacking platform” used to control an animatronic head’s eyes. (we’ve featured the eyes here before). In [...]

Tags:  control xbee servo animatronic-head servo-control Wireless hacks  

[Shazin] had some free time on his hands, so he settled in to do something he had been meaning to for a while – learn Android programming. He went an indirect route, and ended up using the Scripting Layer for Android (SL4A), which gave him a head start on the process. Sitting in between the [...]

Tags:  exercise servo android sl4a indirect-route voice-control hacks  

Ultrasonic rangfinders are a cheap and easy way to gather obstacle avoidance data. When added to a servo motor they form something of a scanning radar for near-proximity objects. In this implementation, [Rui Cabral] is driving the servo, and collecting data from the sensor using a PIC 18F4520. The servo rotates 180 degreees, taking sensor [...]

Tags:  radar servo ultrasonic ultrasonic-rangefinder obstacle-avoidance servo-motor microcontrollers  

Servo8bit is a library for AVR microcontrollers that allows you to drive servo motors without the need for a 16-bit timer. Obviously, this is quite useful for smaller chips that only have 8-bit timers and it is specifically targeted at the ATtiny45 and ATtiny85 microcontrollers. The library offers 256 steps of resolution, and can drive up to [...]

Tags:  library servo attiny servo-motors microcontrollers hacks microcontrollers  

[Chris] is at it again and this time he has put together a tutorial rounding off his animatronic face by actuating the mouth. His tutorial covers two different styles of robot mouth: an LCD mouth which dims to imply actuation and a servo articulated flap. [Chris] covers all the aspects of each mouth type, from [...]

Tags:  mouth tutorial servo chris animatronics actuation different-styles how-to  

For anyone that works in a large office building, odds are you know the pains of dealing with a poorly regulated HVAC system. [Robovergne] and his co-workers recently moved to a new location, and found that the air conditioning control was less than effective, leaving the office as hot as a sauna or as cold [...]

Tags:  conditioner air office air-conditioner new-location servo arduino hacks  

Since he was a kid [Giorgos Lazaridis] has always loved the idea of having an electronic door locking mechanism, and now that he has the means, he’s decided to construct one for securing the door to his apartment. He calls the project “simple and cheap”, though we’re not sure about the first part. Taking a [...]

Tags:  door servo diy lazaridis apartment home hacks  

A while back, [Windell] from Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories wrote up an article for Make Magazine detailing how he built a one-ton, servo-controlled scissor jack for under $100. He dropped us a line to let us know that the project details have been released for free at Make Projects, so we stopped by to take [...]

Tags:  windell servo evil mad-scientist project-details tool hacks  

[Lucas Fragomeni] is controlling this robot using the accelerometer on his Android phone (translated). He could have gone through our Android tutorials and developed a custom application but he took the shorter route and used Amarino, an ‘Android meets Arduino’ toolkit, to do it for him. [Lucas] combined an Arduino, a BlueSMiRF Bluetooth modem, and two servo [...]

Tags:  amarino arduino android lucas-fragomeni lucas accelerometer custom-application servo hacks  

Ah, we love musical hacks that actually play music.  [Mike Baxter] is back again with a new servo electric guitar. This one, called the physical string synthesizer, and has only one string.  He’s using two Arduinos to control the unit. One to change the midi file to a note within the string’s limits and the [...]

Tags:  guitar servo string mike-baxter music-mike midi-file arduino hacks  

[Deadbird] decided to use a LEGO 8880 Super Car as a host for all of his electronic tinkering. Throughout his blog (translated) you’ll find the vehicle with an Arduino MEGA interfacing various prototyping bits. It starts with the motors for locomotion, closely followed by a servo for steering. From there we see the addition of [...]

Tags:  lego deadbird host lego-8880 prototyping-projects servo toy hacks  

This board is [Eric Seifert's] venture into working with AVR microcontrollers. He has worked with PIC microcontrollers in the past and used the goal of developing a servo controller board as his motivation to try the grass on the other side of the fence. He found he likes the AVR line for its ease of [...]

Tags:  board controller servo eric-seifert pic-microcontrollers grass-on-the-other-side servo-controller classic hacks  

[Darrell] is using a sound card to drive this servo motor. The motor draws power from a cellphone battery with the control signal coming from one of the audio channels. It’s not too surprising that this works since the motor just needs a PWM signal to operate and that’s what is used to create the [...]

Tags:  card servo motor darrell servo-motor pwm-signal cellphone-battery pcs hacks  

[Antonb] added 10-bit encoding to a standard servo. He’s removed the potentiometer, separated its shaft and used it to rotate a small magnet. By sandwiching an AS5040 rotatory encoder IC into the servo’s housing he can now measure the precise orientation of the servo horn. This is made easier by his tiny breakout board for [...]

Tags:  servo precision bit potentiometer shaft tool hacks  

[AntonB] has modified a servo into a powerful linear actuator (think: changing rotational motion into linear motion). The process is simple enough, modify a servo for continuous rotation and then add the custom built actuating shaft. You do of course lose the precision of the servo, but a small price to pay to be able [...]

Tags:  motion actuator servo continuous-rotation linear-motion misc hacks