Servo motors are one way to make projects come to life with exciting movements like steering robots, flipping switches, and more. To control a servo you need to generate a special PWM, or pulse-width modulation, signal. Most development boards can generate a few basic PWM signals, but what if you need to control a lot of servos or don’t have a board with PWM support? The PCA9685 PWM driver board comes to the rescue! This driver board can generate up to 16-channels (or 8-channels in FeatherWing form) of PWM signals–perfect for driving many servos!
This guide explores how to use the PCA9685 PWM & Servo driver with MicroPython. You’ll learn how to connect the PCA9685 to a MicroPython board and use it to control LED brightness and move servos.
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Stop breadboarding and soldering – start making immediately! Adafruit’s Circuit Playground is jam-packed with LEDs, sensors, buttons, alligator clip pads and more. Build projects with Circuit Playground in a few minutes with the drag-and-drop MakeCode programming site, learn computer science using the CS Discoveries class on code.org, jump into CircuitPython to learn Python and hardware together, TinyGO, or even use the Arduino IDE. Circuit Playground Express is the newest and best Circuit Playground board, with support for CircuitPython, MakeCode, and Arduino. It has a powerful processor, 10 NeoPixels, mini speaker, InfraRed receive and transmit, two buttons, a switch, 14 alligator clip pads, and lots of sensors: capacitive touch, IR proximity, temperature, light, motion and sound. A whole wide world of electronics and coding is waiting for you, and it fits in the palm of your hand.
Have an amazing project to share? The Electronics Show and Tell is every Wednesday at 7pm ET! To join, head over to YouTube and check out the show’s live chat – we’ll post the link there.
