Matt had a great idea for expanding the usefulness of a servo motor – use it as an input device allowing one to record the motors position.
I thought this would be pretty fun; by reading the voltage from the center pin of the the servo’s potentiometer, it can be used as an input as well as an output device. Basically, you get a bunch of extra positional sensors ‘for free’.
In the above demo he uses the strategy to record and playback ‘keyframes’ with an Arduino – very cool! – Servo as input device [via Electronics-Lab]
4 thoughts on “Use a servo motor for input”
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Nice! It always bothers me when folks add an external position sensor to servo-based machines–so redundant!
You can also read the duty cycle of the motor in the servo to determine the load it is under, and from that determine the amount of torque being applied to the servo.