damn servos
i was very excited to work on the robot today. at first everything looked good. all of my servos were working. i was holding him in one hand while programming with the other. quite silly, but my work area sucks and that was easiest.
at some point one of the servos just stopped working. it was one of the foot servos. i expected that if one would go it would be these. the foot i glued on artificially limited the servo and since i didn't have the limits working in software yet it would often peg to the artificial limit.
after a bit more fiddling trying to get the software limits to work on the other foot.. the other foot just stopped working too.
i decided to just take both feet off and work without them. so i do that and the lateral hip servo doesn't work anymore.
wtf!
having the very first and very last servos break in a leg chain is pretty much the worst case scenario. all the wiring has to be taken off and done again. i decided that i need a better plan, so i took everything apart.
i tested all the servos again and the 3 servos were indeed dead. however, in the one servo i did take completely apart the motor was fine. i'm guessing the problem is either the extremely thin 3 layer circuit board not being able to handle the current, or the h-bridge just dying. either way, that is bullshit.
i don't want to get in the habit of just buying replacement servos left and right. if these servos break, i can't do shit to fix them (chips are covered in black epoxy). i have a feeling that i will break many, many more. so.. i am going to replace the broken servo circuitry with either my own stuff or the openservo (overkill) stuff. i'm not going to try and pack it into the servo because there is no reason and it is just a better idea not to imo anyway. (i also think that it might be a good idea to not even have the motor in there either. have the motion transferred via a flex cable and keep the pot in there for feedback.)
damn servos.