CH24-A - Servo Sweep

The 270 Degree Servo Motor has a 3-wire connector on the end that can plug directly into the pins on the back of the Bit Board.

Make sure the Orange Wire is closest to the number 13 for the Pin 13 column.

Then the Brown Wire should be closest to the micro:bit (in the - row) and the Red Wire will be in the middle (the +5v row).

If you've never used a micro:bit before you'll want to check out this guide: Bit Board V2 Setup and Use

We're going to load the following code for our Servo Sweep program: https://makecode.microbit.org/_W1EC3K5z2...

The Pins section contain the blocks you'll need to control a 270 servo.

We're just going to set the servo to the 0 position, wait 3 seconds, then move it to the 180 position, and wait another 3 seconds. (And then repeat!)

Once the code is loaded it should start running immediately.

You can power the micro:bit via the USB cable you used to load the code, but now that we are using servos we recommend using a battery pack plugged into the Bit Board.

The Blue Pins on the Bit Board provide extra power (5 volts instead of 3 volts) by boosting the voltage coming from the battery pack. This helps improve servo performance, especially with multiple servos.

You can see the difference in power and speed by first running the code with just the USB cable powering the the micro:bit and then plugging in the battery pack to the Bit Board.

The servo should sweep back and forth between 0 and 180 degrees... but wait! This is a 270 degree servo, so it will actually move from 0 to (approximately) 270 degrees.

MakeCode expects 180 degree servos, not 270 degree servos, but we can still make it work. We'll discuss this limitation in future guides, and you can see our other guide: LEGO Compatible 270 Degree Servo for a more in-depth look.

Follow along with our recorded Live Stream!

You can watch the full video of us walking through this project, along with explaining and exploring the code: https://youtube.com/live/T8jrPuhOp_g