November 2018
Beginner
472 pages
13h 5m
English
Signals are sent to servo motors using Pulse Width Modulation (PWM). This a system also used to drive DC motors, and our robot has been generating these already. PWM is a square wave, that is, a wave of two states, on or off only. It is the timing of the signal that is interesting. You generate pulses, and the length in time of the pulse encodes the information. So, a shorter pulse is a lower value, and a longer pulse is a higher value. In some systems, the period must be the same, and it is the duty cycle (on time to off time ratio) that changes. Servo motors are less fussy, and the pulse length is the only important feature.
Refer to the following diagram for an example:
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