Controlling Servo

[christophe]

Hello everyone, is there a way to control servos through xlight. Pixel data to servo. I have about 100 servos I would like to control. I want them to rotate 90 degree when pixel is on in xlight. Thank you

 

[fugley]

do you use home assistant ?

 

[christophe]

do you use home assistant ?

I have google cast at home

 

[Gilrock]

Yes I added that capability 7 years ago. You need a board that interfaces to the servos and xLights talks to the board. There are many options out there. In xLights you use the Servo Model along with the Servo Effect.

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2LRjWVWVDh4

 

[Mark_M]

FPP running on a Raspberry Pi can support a PCA9685 16-Channel Servo Driver.
Maybe something better suited would be an Arduino and that running as a serial (USB) controller from FPP/xLights.
Could even program an Arduino to receive DMX and outputs to the servos.

 

[Grozzy]

FPP running on a Raspberry Pi can support a PCA9685 16-Channel Servo Driver.
Maybe something better suited would be an Arduino and that running as a serial (USB) controller from FPP/xLights.
Could even program an Arduino to receive DMX and outputs to the servos.

Built a prototype hat running FPP, Worked well but never had a use case beyond a skull that I never got around to making

 

[christophe]

Thank you for your replies. My aim is to build one as per picture attached. I want to have lights behind it and controlled through xlights. As the lights get activated, the respective servo gets activated. Do you guys think i can control around 200 servos with xlights? Or there is a limitation? Thank you

 

[Grozzy]

Thank you for your replies. My aim is to build one as per picture attached. I want to have lights behind it and controlled through xlights. As the lights get activated, the respective servo gets activated. Do you guys think i can control around 200 servos with xlights? Or there is a limitation? Thank you

XLights can certainly send data for 200 servos without any issue however FPP and the PCA9685 is not a cost effective solution, Not sure you are going to want to buy 13 raspberry pis. What Mark said would probably be a better solution using an Arduino to receive e1.31 data and daisy chaining a bunch of TLC5940s chips and controlling them with SPI.

 

[christophe]

I will use an Arduino Uno that can receive e1.31. Do you know by any chance a website or video where it shows how to set up FPP to talk to arduino? And is there any coding required to the arduino to be able to talk to TLC5940? Thank you

 

[Grozzy]

FPP and XLights is simple to add a controller as either USB or Ethernet. Your challenge is going to be finding or writing Arduino code to listen for the e1.31 data and then send it out to the servos via spi.
This is a link to the TLC5940 and details of the Arduino library for servo connection.

Tutorial – Arduino and the TLC5940 PWM LED Driver IC

In this article we are going to examine the Texas Instruments TLC5940 16-channel LED driver IC. Our reason for doing this is to demonstrate another, easier way of driving many LEDs – and also…

tronixstuff.com

 

[dkulp]

XLights can certainly send data for 200 servos without any issue however FPP and the PCA9685 is not a cost effective solution, Not sure you are going to want to buy 13 raspberry pis. What Mark said would probably be a better solution using an Arduino to receive e1.31 data and daisy chaining a bunch of TLC5940s chips and controlling them with SPI.

You can daisy chain the PCA9685's as well. Up to 62 of them. A single Pi could control the entire chain. Definitely a pain to configure though.

 

[Grozzy]

You can daisy chain the PCA9685's as well. Up to 62 of them. A single Pi could control the entire chain. Definitely a pain to configure though.

Thanks for the correct, Didn't realise you could add more than 1 PCA9685. Might be less of a pain than trying to write code for an Arduino though.

 

[christophe]

You can daisy chain the PCA9685's as well. Up to 62 of them. A single Pi could control the entire chain. Definitely a pain to configure though.

Thank you. I will definitely give it a try as I have some PCA9685 at home.