{"id":3719,"date":"2014-04-03T17:50:19","date_gmt":"2014-04-03T21:50:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/labrigger.com\/blog\/?p=3719"},"modified":"2014-04-03T17:50:19","modified_gmt":"2014-04-03T21:50:19","slug":"controlling-a-bunch-of-servos","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/labrigger.com\/blog\/2014\/04\/03\/controlling-a-bunch-of-servos\/","title":{"rendered":"Controlling a bunch of servos"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"bildr\"<\/a><\/p>\n

A friend just asked a quick question: How can I make a bunch of cheap (not fast) laser shutters?<\/em> Here’s a quick answer: For motors, servos are pretty easy to use. Put a piece of black material on the arm of the servo if the laser is weak and this is safe to do. Alternatively, put a mirror on it and direct the beam to a beam block.<\/p>\n

Drive the servo motors with an Arduino. Here’s a demo<\/a> on how you can hook it up.<\/p>\n

Piece of cake. Give this job to a barely conscious undergrad.<\/p>\n

Here’s a shopping list, all from Sparkfun (not sponsored– just a good company):
\nArduino – $25<\/a>
\nBreakout board – $13<\/a>
\n5v adapter – $6<\/a>
\nServo – $13<\/a>
\nUSB cable – $5<\/a>
\nHeader pins – $1.50<\/a><\/p>\n

If you want to control them from switches, that’s easy to implement with the Arduino directly. Alternatively, you can use Processing<\/a> (with Firmata<\/a>) and make a simple GUI interface on the host computer.<\/p>\n

An alternative (and more expensive) approach is to use linear actuators<\/a> and an IO board<\/a> from Phidgets.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

<\/a><\/p>\n

A friend just asked a quick question: How can I make a bunch of cheap (not fast) laser shutters?<\/em> Here’s a quick answer: For motors, servos are pretty easy to use. Put a piece…<\/p>\n

Read More<\/a><\/div><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3720,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[41,22,32,10],"class_list":["post-3719","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-hardware","tag-arduino","tag-electronics","tag-laser","tag-processing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/labrigger.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3719","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/labrigger.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/labrigger.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/labrigger.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/labrigger.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3719"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/labrigger.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3719\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3723,"href":"http:\/\/labrigger.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3719\/revisions\/3723"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/labrigger.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3720"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/labrigger.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3719"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/labrigger.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3719"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/labrigger.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3719"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}