RPi Cam Servo Control

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Hey Guys
I ordered THIS Pan/Tilt Camera Platform Anti-Vibration Camera Mount with 2 Servos on ebay. The thing hasn’t arrived yet but i wanted to ask if there already is a possibility to control those two servos with Pimatic?

Wiring:

As you can see, i use the expander Board “PCA9685”, which purpose right now is to control my RGB Stripe via Johnny Five. Unfortunately i’ve got zero experience with servos so my Questions are: Can they be controlled in both directions with this board or do i need something like a pole changer? I initially thought about a dimmer device on these pins but these would work in only one direction. Something like arrow Buttons for up, down, left, right would be great. Do we have such in Pimatic? What about the limits so the servos would’nt pull out their own cables? Do countable “Steps” exist for limiting or should i rather install some micro switches? What about the Speed - on full power this thing is fuckin fast

Here is a picture of the thingi

Thanks in advance for your help
and best regards

Servos don´t have “Steps”, they are controled by PWM. So there is no need for limit switches.

@khaki93 J5 has an abstraction for servos which is good for standard and continuous servos. The position can be controlled by setting the angle (in degrees) and the speed of movement. Depending on the configuration the control is mapped accordingly to the sensor. See also:

http://johnny-five.io/api/servo/
http://johnny-five.io/examples/servo-PCA9685/

It should be relatively straightforward to add Servo-Support to pimatic-johnny-five. I put this on my TODO list. I am planning to work on the plugin to update to the latest J5 version and to sort out support for J5 pin takeover/exclusion - see also https://forum.pimatic.org/topic/3856/johnny-five-pin-takeover-and-more-problems

@mwittig Thanks for your effort
(In) Excluding the Pins really was’nt that hard. But i’ve absolutely got no idea, how to configure Pimatic to work with not yet existing Plugin functions. So I’ll have to wait until you kind Sir implement the Feature or i learned how to programm it myself :D
Best Regards

Edit 27.03.2018
The servo platform arrived last week and i just assembled it. See pictures below. By now i know a lot more about servos. If someone wants to do the same Thing, here a few things to know about servos:

• Tiny but powerfull motors with a gearbox and electronics, that are controlled by a PWM Signal.
• Mountable via “servo horns” to many other hardware parts.
• Rotating in any direction (as fast as you want).
• No need for limit switches (most Servos got a rotate limitation in degrees)
• Integrated angle control system that keeps the Position.

Everything is well explained in this Video: YoutubeLink

The next step will be to configure pimatic (If @mwittig writes the servo function in Johnny Five) or the RPi Cam Control Servo Blaster to control the Platform. At least it’s already possible to view the cam via iframe. When everything’s done, i’ll write more detailed information about how to use the RPi Cam Software in Pimatic.

Edit 01.04.2018:
I just tried to control the servos with a JohnnyFive PWM output.
Uhm yeah it slightly moved, one of the jumper wires started to burn and the servo got hot as f**k. Luckily the Pi, expander board and servos survived.

Finally, the servos I have ordered have been delivered.

Hello People
Are there any news about the Servos with Johnny five? I still could’nt figure a way to get them working

… Edit:
Johnny-Five’s making huge Problems. As mentioned HERE, the Pi works fine again with Pimatic - until i activate Johnny Five It produces the RAM Filling problem again.

@khaki93 Sorry for silcence on the matter. I did not have much time to work on pimatic in the past months. At the moment I can invest a few hours each week, but there is huge backlog of things to do. I hope I can look into J5 soon. The servos lie on my table and I started to play with them a couple of months ago. I think I already damaged one of them Really cheap makes, btw.

Regarding the pigpio memory issue I hope I can make some progress on this. In the past I haven’t been able to reproduce the memory issue, but I assume was related to pigpio and it might have been fixed.

Thank you so much!
No need to hurry. I also have stuff to do before I even got a chance to get bored. For example re programming all of my Rules.
Have a nice week