Make a servo sweepTinkerPieCircuit tutorial 12 of 24 · Beginner · 10 minutes

Connect a servo motor to power and a signal pin and sweep it from 0 to 180 degrees.

Open this circuit in TinkerPieCircuit (free, runs in your browser)

What you will learn

• Servo wiring: ground, power and signal
• servoWrite(pin, angle)
• for loops

Parts

TinkerPie V1 board1 servo motor

Steps

1. Add the servo

   Click Servo motor. It has three wires: G (brown), V (red) and SIG (orange).

2. Wire the power

   Wire G to GND and V to 5V. Servos need more power than a pin can give.

3. Wire the signal

   Wire SIG to S1. The signal tells the servo which angle to go to.

4. Sweep with a loop

   A for loop counts from 0 to 180 in steps of 10 and calls servoWrite(S1, a) each time.

5. Press Start

   The horn of the servo turns and the label shows the angle. If the label says no power, check the V and G wires.

The code

function loop() {
  for (let a = 0; a <= 180; a += 10) {
    servoWrite(S1, a);
    delay(40);
  }
  for (let a = 180; a >= 0; a -= 10) {
    servoWrite(S1, a);
    delay(40);
  }
}

Copy this into the Code tab. It is Arduino-style JavaScript. The real board uses the same pin names (S1, P10…) in TinkerPie Studio.

How it works

The signal pin sends short pulses. The length of each pulse tells the servo the angle. TinkerPie handles the pulses for you.

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