The Ultimate Servo Hack

I have been building little robot projects on and off for the last few years. Most of the projects I start reach the point where the feasability of what I had in mind is proven. Not long after that, the magic ends, and I lose interest. One project that I have managed to stick with for the last few months is the Belligerator. While there has been a lot of progress, one of the things that has haunted me is the lack of a decent drive motor for the wheels. Sure, I have been able to get fairly good speed control out of a Futaba standard servo, but fine positioning has been very difficult, and several of my quadrature encoders have proven to be insufficiently accurate. Finally I decided it was time for something drastic.

Enter the ultimate servo hack:

• 1 amp current handling
• Serial, PWM, or triggered canned cycle control
• Programmable, and serialized
• Daisy chainable
• < 1mm positioning accuracy at the wheel
• Absolute, relative, and velocity modes
• GPL licensed firmware, and Creative Commons hardware

Of course, to complete these design goals, and not break the bank, I had to get a little clever. What follows are the instructions on how to duplicate my effort...

To be continued...