What are the additional power supplies that can be used to support more than 4 servo motor when using Arduino?
You can connect 4 servo motor via usb or connect the Lynxmotion's SSC-32
For mobile application you could also use LiPo batteries. I powered servos with two cells. Resulting in 7-8V. First you should make sure if they support these operating voltages. 4 servos connected to one two cell battery worked very well. If the capacity of the battery is large enough it shouldn't be a problem to power more.
In fact, the question can be reformulated to if you need to use several motors, you have to consider the weight, dimension, and autonomy. So if you have in your project decided by a value for the autonomy, for example, 2 hours, for this value, and since for each kind of battery, you have associated an energy density (ED), discharge rate (DR), and specific energy (SE), you find the total mass for the battery and the volume occupied for this battery. The best choice is for batteries which have high energy density and specific energy. However the price becomes high too. It is the choice for the project. You must identify the limitations in your project. In my case, I work with underwater robots and the size is the critical factor.
The cheap battery is the Lead acid battery. But it has low DE and SE. So your project is heavier than using, for example, LIPO battery. There is an old paper Parametric analysis of the configuration of autonomous underwater vehicles, Brighenti, A., IEEE Journal of Oceanic Engineering, 1990, vol. 15 which shows some batteries. I hope these explanations gives to you some insight about this.
Hi,
If your total current rating of 4 such servo's are more than 1A, then you can go for two options... You can use Android SMPS 5V, 2A USB chargers or the best way out is the desktop SMPS which can give upto 10A for different 3.3V, 5V and 12V supplies....
If powering the servos with 5 V voltage and your robot is powered by 2 cell Li-Ion battery that delivers 7.2 V or a higher voltage power supply is used then a DC-DC step down converted will yield best results in terms of efficiency.
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