Close

PoEPi Servo Control Board

A project log for PoEPi: Pi Zero Power over Ethernet with PHY

It can power the Raspberry Pi Zero over Ethernet. The board also adds an Ethernet Phy to the Raspberry Pi Zero to give you full Ethernet

julienjulien 02/19/2016 at 13:200 Comments

Who doesn't love moving motors from far away? Well that was the point of this design. The power that is available in PoE is easily enough to control some small motors as long as you are careful what you are doing. I decided to put only 4 servos on the board but this can be changed easily if someone is making a different version of the board. The Servos are controlled from the GPIO, you can use whatever library you want to control them, I have some docs here.

This is the schematic section that describes the servos. There is current limiting in case the motors are to big or they experience a stall condition. This part is untested and it would be great to have some feedback. I simulated it but I have a bad history with Spice. The low side MOSFET will disable the ground of the servos.

The board itself has the servo headers sticking out so they don't interfere with the Pi. I hate to continually violate the Pis form factor but those 3 pin right angle headers are hard to get a hold of.

Discussions