Small PIC Micro Based Servo Tester

An Atmel AT90S2343 8-pin MCU is used as the basis of building this servo tester that will be used to test servos modified for continuous rotation and servos being used to pan or tilt cameras.

Some of the good features of AT90S2343 include having 128 bytes of RAM, 2kb of Flash Program, and 128 bytes of EEPROM. Four out of five I/O pins are being used in this project and a lot of power is contained in the MCU 8-pin package.

During the construction, soldering the components and building a surface mount PCB make use of a sticky liquid flux that helps a lot in holding the parts down and helps to position the little parts as well. The solder bridges are prevented from forming between the IC chips by the flux without little legs falling in between the PCB pads on the board.

The only I/O pin left on the tester can be used as an enhancement by measuring a potentiometer and performing proportional movements of the servo. Using a RC circuit is a simple way of measuring the potentiometer where charging and discharging of capacitor is monitored on I/O pin.

Rest of the project