Servos

How To Build A Servo LED Driver

Daniel Switkin — Sat, 05 Jul 2008 20:47:06 -0500

One way to get into night flying is to fill a plane with LEDs. You can do that by connecting them directly to the motor battery, or to a dedicated second pack, but neither approach gives you any control. Here's how to reuse an old servo to drive your LEDs, with either on/off or variable brightness from the transmitter.

Futaba Servo Quick Guide

Daniel Switkin — Sat, 28 Jul 2007 16:49:29 -0500

If you've spent any time browsing Futaba's web site, or your favorite online dealer, you've probably noticed the incredible number of servos available. It can be daunting for modelers to choose the right servo for a given use.

It turns out that for airplane applications, there's probably only two servos you need to consider. (If you're one of those very serious flyers with a 10 foot wingspan, 5 horsepower monstrosity, you don't need this quick guide anyway). That's because most planes call for either standard or micro size servos, although it's worth noting that not everyone seems to agree on what micro means. This table lists the two models to look for:

Home Made Servo Tester

Daniel Switkin — Wed, 18 Jul 2007 21:03:27 -0500

Mikael Pedersen is one clever guy. He's built a very impressive home made servo tester with many cool features. From his site:

Generates two separate signals for driving two servos.
Sweep mode for stress testing servos.
Input for reading a servo signal (from a receiver).
Receiver signal quality analysis.
Very high resolution at both input and outputs. 0.1µs (which equals 10,000 steps between 1 and 2 ms).
Voltage and current readout.
Simple user control. Access all features with just a single rotary knob with integrated push button.
2 x 16 character LCD.
Optical tachometer.
RS-232 connection for future expansion.

Mikael has complete hardware plans and the software needed to build your own tester freely available. If you're a servo geek and handy with a soldering iron, check it out! read more »