I am building an animatronic dragon and I wanted to incorporate the Movi shield into it. I need the Movi shield to control all my servos (I plan on using servo shield as I will have 10 servos that will need to be powered by a 6V 12AH battery) while playing a sound effect from the SD card. The servo functions I will be using are the sweep example code in ardunio, and a set servo to a certain degree code. I was wondering how I would program this and if the Movi shield is compatible with a servo shield?
Yes I believe it should work fine. I have developed a sketch to open and close a robot gripper for a quadriplegic person using voice commands.
In my case I used a linear servo that would open and close gripper arms by pulling on a wire. In the case of multiple servos you will need define multiple output pins to drive each servo. For example #define PIN_SERVO (12) to output to pin 12.
You will also need to name each servo separately in your setup.
For example
Servo myServo1
Also, when using the Servo Library (servo.h )be aware the start up value is set to 1500 in the library, which is equivalent to 90 degrees in a rotating servo. When you power up your arduino program, the servo library will automatically move the servo to the 1500 location or 90 degrees. That did not work for me when I used it on a linear servo. If you want the servo to move to a different startup position, say 0 degrees, you will have to edit the servo library and change the value 1500 to near zero. (Maybe not exactly zero as servos can overshoot and get lost. A value of say 5 might be reasonable.
I use a mac and edited the servo.h library using Xcode. There is probably a comparable editor in windows and Linux depending on what OS you are using.
Because you are running multiple servos, I recommend you used a larger arduino board that has more outputs and more memory to handle your larger sketch. Perhaps a Mega 2560 board rather than a UNO 3.
You may find the SetStrokePerc(float strokePercentage) command useful. I have not played with the sweep code example.