SB Servo Powerful Open-Source Digital Serial Servo Motor
SB Servo is a series of high quality affordable serial servo motors.
SB Servo is a crowdfunded servo motor project aimed at providing affordable yet reliable servos for embedded enthusiasts. SB Serial Servos launched on 11 Feb 2020 at Kickstarter.
The SB servo Kickstarter campaign launched 2 motors-
SB-SS023
SB-SS15
The two motors have the same working protocols but have different torque and sizes.SB Servo Powerful Open-Source Digital Serial Servo Motor
The SB Servo provides a wide variety of features that are very much for a single user in a single project.
In this article, we’ll discuss SB Servos, its features, and its applications.
What is the buzz about SB Servo?
SB Servo provides 2 varieties of high torque affordable Serial Servo motors. The SB-SS15 provides a torque of 15KG.cm and SB-SS023 provides a torque of 2.3KG.cm for light applications. It is made of high-quality Nylon and glass fiber material and metal gears to provide longer life and durability to motors. The motors are designed for both industrial and educational purposes.
These motors provide real-time data feedback, which is useful in many applications. This motor is a perfect choice for students and engineers with robotic applications. However, it can be used in other projects as well.
How is it different from others?
The conventional DC servo motors were controlled via a PWM signal, each motor had a wire where we had to provide a PWM control signal. So the issue was that as the number of motors increases the complexity of the wires, pins, hardware, and the computer program increases. With this, they had no data feedback system, meaning you didn’t know which direction the shaft of the motor was facing, what is the voltage at the motor and that your signal is delivered properly.
With the SB servo motors, the above problems are sorted out by the Modbus serial communication. The motors are identified with a unique ID ranging from 1 to 253, each motor has an ID and up to 253 motors are connected serially. This approach saves you a lot of GPIO pins earlier needed for generating PWM output.
Now that motors are controlled by the serial UART communication, there are only 2 GPIO pins consumed for as much as 253 motors.
The servos also provide acknowledgment for the data received and other real-time data for the position of the shaft, temperature of the motor, speed, torque, voltage, etc.