Complex animatronics

[Ebuechner]

My recent testing shows that the servo dog is very sensitive to the input.
After a recent experience with the servo dog and having the pins melt I made a custom crossover cable to be on the safe side and that's what I'm using to talk to it.
The cable that I made is only using a single twisted pair and no ground with pins 1 & 2 for DMX on one side and pins 4 & 5 on the other side for the Lor.

[Gilrock]

Yeah I just looked up the ServoDog on LOR's site and I don't like how they advertise they "automatically detects LOR or DMX connectivity" without explaining that they don't follow the DMX standard wiring everyone else does.

[Ebuechner]

That 10 volts on pin 3 (I think) me nervous.
That could burn out a lot of devices if you're not paying attention.
When my Servo dog had the Meltdown I'm pretty sure that the pins just jumped inside the connector and shorted out when I plugged in.
I had the jumpers on my F-16 set up to Lor and had a straight through cable so I shouldn't have had a problem.
On a side note I have not had a problem with RJ45 connectors on anything except for Lor devices.

[bobschm]

On the other hand, the ServoDog has the same input wiring as every other LOR board. Strange that no one seems to have had meltdowns with any LOR boards before. As for the sensitivity, it could well be that the input circuitry is different on the ServoDog making it require a stronger signal than the newer Falcon puts out.

I'd love to get it working though, since it is a dirt simple board to program.  The LOR software doesn't know if you're sending commands to a servo or a string of incans. Everything is 0-100% intensity. It's the board that decodes that intensity ramp into servo pulses. I'll keep fiddling and let you know if I succeed.

[bobschm]

Ok. I just got another DMX bridge from Jon Back on FB. This works fine. So two things got me all messed up. First, the Falcon F16V3 DMX output is not able to talk to a ServoDog board for some unknown reason. Second, the DMX bridge I had was defective and wouldn't talk to anything.

Once I got a working DMX bridge, I can indeed run a ServoDog using just AC intensity commands out of xLights. I use LOR utility to set the limits and rest positions, so you still need a USB dongle for that.

So back to work I go. And after the holidays, I'll put all this together so others can use the ServoDog for animatronics.

The Son of Chucky board would be nice, but I think 16 bit servos is overkill for animatronics. If you are flying model planes, a half a degree is the difference between level flight and diving. A half a degree on a skull jaw is not an issue. So if there was a way to switch the board to 8 bit servos and you could use say12 or 14 servos from one board, that would be awesome.

Of course, xLights would have to do a lot more work internally.  Thanks all for the hints and help here.

[Gilrock]

Well I'd be more inclined to think your Falcon output is defective.  If standard DMX out a F16v3 wasn't working there would be a lot of us complaining because I personally have a F16v3 driving LOR controllers myself.

[bobschm]

I think so few are using the ServoDog that if the F16V3 can't talk to it, no one would notice. After the holidays, I may try talking to one of my 16 channel LOR boards with the Falcon. My guess is it will work fine. I'm guessing the SD has a less robust DMX input circuit or the firmware gets confused more easily.

[Charles Belcher]

I think so few are using the ServoDog that if the F16V3 can't talk to it, no one would notice. After the holidays, I may try talking to one of my 16 channel LOR boards with the Falcon. My guess is it will work fine. I'm guessing the SD has a less robust DMX input circuit or the firmware gets confused more easily.

Bobschm,

I too, am using (2) ServoDogs this year.  I am using one with both an 8ch SainSmart Solid State Relay to drive little AC motors, and ch 5 in PWM mode to drive a little DC motor.  On the second ServoDog, I am using (3) Fostec 25amp solid state relays to push my pump rig for the dancing waters along with (3) Servos to move the nozzles around.

With that said, I have LOR Pixcon16 controllers.  While attempting to run these off of a bridged output of the Pixcon, I am getting random voltage from the ServoDog across all the pins feeding the relays.

This is the same Cat5 cable and jack that I can use successfully to bridge either a LOR CMB24 or a 1602 controller.  So I agree that something is up with the ServoDog.

I am attempting now to work around this and use a dongle having off of my master FFP PI.  I have never done this before and not sure how to do it or if it will work.

Charles