Warning: Do not turn the Servos by hand. Doing so can damage the mechanisms inside the Servos.
- Pick up each component and examine it closely.
- Refer to the video and identify each of the components as one of the following:
- 1 Arduino Uno board
- 1 Breadboard
- 1 Continuous Servo (the big Servo in the videos)
- 1 Standard Servo (the small Servo in the videos)
- 3 Red wires
- 3 Black wires
- 2 White wires
- 1 USB A to USB type B Cable
- 1 Computer
You may want to have extra Servos of both types as some groups may want to program 2 continuous Servos or 2 standard Servos.
At the Thinkabit Lab, we reuse our Servos as much as possible. This means there are likely bits of glue attached to them from a previous project or they might even have a broken horn, but the Servos will still be functional.
Some Servos have different colored wires than the ones used at Thinkabit Lab. If your Servos have different colors, try to match them as closely as possible to ours. Brown is sometimes used in place of black, orange in place of red, and yellow in place of white. It is important to note that colored wires do not actually carry a charge (they are not positive or negative) until they are plugged into a positive or negative power source. Using wires that are blue, green, and pink would be fine and everything would work the same, as long as it is very clear which goes where. We like to color-code because it makes it easier for instruction and minimizes mistakes.
Servo horn, the top piece attached to the Servo, is broken
- It is not necessary to replace the horn if it is missing a leg or two because hot glue will be used to attach objects to it anyway.
Servo horn missing
- Attach a horn on the Servo or replace the Servo.