Introduction: Interfacing Servo Motor With ESP32

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Servo Motors are one of the most important actuators in the realm of robotics being applied in use cases from RC planes to automated door locks. Therefore, this second module of the ESP32 lesson, we will cover how to control servo motors.

Interfacing a servo motor to the ESP32 is very difficult compared to an Arduino, since it does not support analogWrite(). However, it uses various frequencies and timers, allowing the all digital pins to be used as PWM pins as well send signals significantly faster than any Arduino!!!

Step 1: Tools and Materials

  • ESP32 Development Board
  • Servo Motor
  • 3 pieces of male-to-male jumper wires
  • Breadboard

Step 2: Circuitry

  • Connect the signal pin of the servo, shown as the white wire, to pin D2 on the ESP32 board.
  • Connect the VCC pin of the servo, shown as the red wire, to the 3.3V pin on the ESP32 board.
  • Finally, connect the ground pin of the servo, shown as the blackwire, to the GND pin on the ESP32 board.

Step 3: Coding

#define COUNT_LOW 0
 #define COUNT_HIGH 8888
 #define TIMER_WIDTH 16
#include "esp32-hal-ledc.h"
void setup() {
   ledcSetup(1, 50, TIMER_WIDTH); // channel 1, 50 Hz, 16-bit width
   ledcAttachPin(2, 1);   // GPIO 22 assigned to channel 1
}
void loop() {
   for (int i=COUNT_LOW ; i < COUNT_HIGH ; i=i+100)
   {
      ledcWrite(1, i);       // sweep servo 1
      delay(50);
   }
}

Attachments

Step 4: Demonstration Video

The servo motions follows as programmed going from the minimum to maximum at much faster speeds relative to an Arduino or ESP8266.

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