I finished building a robot for Science Olympiad and then today I realized that every once and a while the servo will “dose off” or something. It will work fine then it will slow to a stop and stop responding. If I turn off the transmitter then turn it back on, the servo will respond for a couple of seconds then stop again. I don’t have any other motors or servos so I can’t replace it (the competition is on Monday the 3rd) This is the first time using the servo since I bought it because I haven’t needed it since my last one broke.
I am using a 9.6 volt battery but it did the same thing with the 7.4 volt which I was using before the 9.6v, so I know that the battery didn’t damage it.
You might be overheating it? After it “doses off” feel and and see if it is warm. I can’t think of any other reason that a servo would do this. You might want to make sure your code is all correct.
you know, i made a gripper for FTC with a servo and the exact same thing happened, i know i was definitly not overheating it, it was really jittery too
I don’t know what else would be causing this. If you can you might want to try replacing the gears inside the servo. If there are teeth broken off or something they may be “floating” inside the grease and jamming.
Sorry basicxman I was referring more to the original post. I’ll add a quote up there. Jitteryness is often caused by poor RF transmission. At some point the connection isn’t great. Make sure your wires are all plugged in completely. Another thing to try is if the servo is on one of the analog channels on the remote, ch1-4, switch it to one of the digital channels, ch5&6.
Could it be low battery? Whenever our controllers start acting weird, we just turn them off and on again, and/or we replace the battery. This generally works, but we’ve never had that happen to us.
You could be getting interference from another device such as your TV or radio. Try taking it outside to someplace like a park. If it works there, you can probably just turn off your other appliances.
I tried tethering it and that didn’t help. It was brand new and never used. I checked the gears and nothing was broken. It didn’t make any noise either. If I turned off the transmitter and counted to ten then turned it back on then it would work for about another minute. I’m pretty sure it was shorting out because after a while of it doing this it would start to get pretty warm right by where the wires come out of the case.
Anyway… The servo quit in the middle of the competition but I ended up taking first anyways, so it didn’t really matter.
