Controlling a Servo with PIC Microcontroller

Driving hobby servos using a PIC microcontroller is the main goal of this project which can also be used in other microcontroller projects.

The control signals of servo include a red wire, a working 5V, ground connections, and a control signal on the third wire. It does not have a fixed period since the signal is almost pulse width modulated. It is composed of pulses of voltage, the duration of which determine the angle of the output shaft and the pulses can be from 0.9ms to 2.1ms long while 1.5ms being the center position. This signifies that the pulse duration varies linearly with shaft angle.

For the control signal, the only change that need to be made for this project is to replace the LED and its resistor with the wire for the control signal. This is done by just connecting pin 3 to the white/yellow wire from the servo instead of connecting pin 3 to a resistor and then to an LED and then to ground. A voltage divider is performed by the potentiometer which is simply two resistors in series with contact in the middle at which to measure voltage.

Rest of the project