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Muscle to micro servo circuit

Doppleganger

Morning all

So i started a Udemy class on Electronics and Robotics a while ago, and frankly I'm struggling. Apparently I'm great at building circuits from a photo or a video, but I have a lot of issues with schematics. Not super relevant to the post, but it may be helpful to you all to know where I'm coming from. I hope this isn't offside, but if some fine peeps could take a look at what I've built, see if I missed anything, or miss placed anything, that would be super helpful. Normally id just harass the instructor, but the class is 7 years old, and he is busy with other projects now and doesn't get back to me very often. 

So, red, orange and yellow wires on the left go to the micro servo. Blue, green and yellow at bottom right go to the muscle sensors. Top positive and bottom negative are 6v, and the neg is also my ground (unsure about that, prof kinda skimmed that detail). Top negative is positive 9v, and bottom positive is neg 9v. Did that just to keep things straight in my head. I didn't have a 1000 cap, hence the stack of 3 in the middle of the board. 

Main concern i have, that it dosnt work. Beyond that, from going through the class forum from many years ago, other students had a sh*t load of wires coming off the amp. I get that we all build differently, but just have 2, not 30. Maybe more weird than concerning.

Again, any insights are helpful.

imageimageimageimage

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  • Hello,

    I teach breadboarding skills and my immediate reaction to your photos is to say that the easiest remedy to your wiring issues is to tidy up the way you do your breadboarding. I would ask you to do this before I would even attempt to help troubleshoot the circuit.

    It is very hard to comprehend complex wiring when it is "spaghetti wiring" (a term my fellow instructors and I use to describe the way you've done your breadboarding) with long leads on your components crossing over each other.

    A search for examples of "tidy breadboarding" yielded the photo below from Instructables.com

    Tidy Breadboarding (image from Instrcuctables.com)

    Note how the resistor leads are clipped short so that they can be placed very neatly on the board. Similarly, the wires are just long enough to do their job. Capacitors, LEDs, and other components should also have their leads clipped to reasonable lengths. You will need to bend the leads at 90 angles using needle nose pliers to keep things this tidy.

    This does take extra time and skill to do when initially constructing your circuits, but it saves huge amounts of time when troubleshooting or modifying your circuits.

    Some beginners are reluctant to clip the leads on their components, thinking they we need the extra length for future labs/projects. However, components are easily reused unless the leads are clipped off extremely short. Jumper wires can be used to interconnect them

    The Instructables example is overly neat. You don't need to go to that extreme.

    Ben Eater, one of my YouTube heroes, is an electronics expert and has an excellent video on this subject (entitled Breadboarding Tips)

     

    With regards,

    Rick

  • in reply to rad_bcit

    For breadboards, I belong to the spaghetti crew. Once so often, when I make something that has to last for a bit longer, I'll do my best to keep things a bit organised. But usually, components come and go, are swapped out, .... A pure experimental work area.

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  • in reply to Jan Cumps

    The Ben Eater video I referenced above demonstrates that even he starts with spaghetti style breadboarding, as that's the fastest way to get things built initially. However, once he gets a circuit working (and before he shows his work to others) he clips his leads shorter and minimizes the length of jumpers.

    It's fine for an experienced person to throw things together on a breadboard quickly for their own purposes. Since  is still learning the basics, I recommended what I find works best for my first-year students. The process of methodically going through a circuit build seems to have great benefits for learning and troubleshooting.