Arduino How to Connect Multiple Servo Motors - PCA9685 Tutorial

by RonFrtek in Circuits > Arduino

9409 Views, 3 Favorites, 0 Comments

Arduino How to Connect Multiple Servo Motors - PCA9685 Tutorial

Arduino How to Connect Multiple Servo Motors - PCA9685 Tutorial

In this tutorial we will learn how to connect several servo motors using PCA9685 module and arduino.

PCA9685 module is very good when you need to connect several motors, you can read more about it here https://www.adafruit.com/product/815

Watch the Video!

What You Will Need

519w7zdrNiL._AC_.jpg
HTB1TMikbyjrK1RjSsplq6xHmVXa3.jpg
FZEK4WBK3XGYAP0.LARGE.jpg
F5OFEUQJJ4ZYFKY.LARGE.jpg
FMMM5N5KEY93G5M.jpg
VisuinoAdvrtisementRaspberryPiRobot.jpg
  • Arduino UNO or any other Arduino board or ESP
  • 16 Channel PWM/Servo Driver I2C PCA9685
  • Servo motors (in this example we use 4 servos)
  • Breadboard
  • Jumper wires
  • Visuino software: Download here

The Circuit

2020-10-20_20-27-52.jpg

  • Connect each servo connector to PCA9685 pins (servo1 to pins 0, servo2 to pins 1,etc)
  • Connect PCA9685 pin SCL to Arduino pin SCL
  • Connect PCA9685 pin SDA to Arduino pin SDA
  • Connect PCA9685 pin VCC to Arduino pin 5V
  • Connect PCA9685 pin GND to Arduino pin GND

Start Visuino, and Select the Arduino UNO Board Type

FRWQB80K1RVKKV9.LARGE.jpg
FBL8FPKK5H5EPPI.LARGE.jpg

The Visuino: https://www.visuino.eu also needs to be installed. Download Free version or register for a Free Trial (Recommended for full experience ).

Start Visuino as shown in the first picture Click on the "Tools" button on the Arduino component (Picture 1) in Visuino When the dialog appears, select "Arduino UNO" as shown on Picture 2

In Visuino Add,Set & Connect Components

2020-10-20_20-33-32.jpg
2020-10-20_20-34-08.jpg
2020-10-20_20-33-51.jpg
  • Add "NXP Servo PCA9685 (I2C)" component
  • Add "Sine Analog Generator" component
  • Connect "SineAnalogGenerator1" pin out to "ServoPCA96851" pins 0
  • Connect "SineAnalogGenerator1" pin out to "ServoPCA96851" pins 1
  • Connect "SineAnalogGenerator1" pin out to "ServoPCA96851" pins 2
  • Connect "SineAnalogGenerator1" pin out to "ServoPCA96851" pins 3
  • Connect "ServoPCA96851" pin Control I2C to Arduino board pin I2C In

Generate, Compile, and Upload the Arduino Code

2020-10-20_20-41-37.jpg

In Visuino, at the bottom click on the "Build" Tab, make sure the correct port is selected, then click on the "Compile/Build and Upload" button.

Play

If you power the Arduino UNO module, the servo motors will start to rotate.

Congratulations! You have completed your project with Visuino. Also attached is the Visuino project, that I created for this Instructable, you can download it and open it in Visuino: https://www.visuino.eu