TECHNICAL SUPPORT
Published 2026-02-17
The most troublesome thing when playing withservos is facing a bunch of messy lines and not knowing where to start, right? Looking at the densely packed pins on the 16-way driver board, and then looking at theservos in hand, it is indeed easy to get dizzy. I have been involved inservocontrol for some years. Today I will sort out these wiring tips and experiences to help you overcome this hurdle.
Many novices get this 16-way driver board for the first time and are confused when they see the row of pins. In fact, its principle is very straightforward, which is to send angle commands to each channel through I2C communication. To put it bluntly, this board is like a traffic controller. If you tell it "Turn the No. 1 servo 90 degrees" through or through the Raspberry Pi, it can accurately send the signal to the corresponding servo. Power supply, signal wire, and ground wire. If you understand these three elements, wiring is more than half successful.
Most people who play with servos will encounter situations where the servos shake, have no power, or simply stop working. Nine times out of ten, there is a problem with the power supply. The current when the servo is started is very large, especially when it is loaded. If you directly use the 5V of the development board to drive multiple servos, it will definitely not be able to drive it. The correct approach is to prepare a separate power supply for the servo, such as a 7.5V lithium battery or a 5V switching power supply. The current must at least reach the sum of the rated current of the servo.
The driver board itself requires two connections: one for power and one for control signals. The power supply can be connected from the V+ and GND of the driver board. Be careful not to reverse the positive and negative poles, otherwise the board may smoke as soon as the power is turned on. For the control signal, connect the SCL of the driver board to the SCL of the development board, and connect SDA to SDA. Then connect the 5V of the development board to the VCC of the driver board, and connect the common ground wire. In this way, the driver board and development board can communicate normally.
Common servos on the market basically have three wires: the brown or black one is the negative pole, the red one is the positive pole, and the orange or yellow one is the signal wire. Each channel on the driver board also has three corresponding pins, usually labeled negative, positive, and signal. ️ When wiring, directly use female-to-female DuPont wire, plug one end into the servo connector, and the other end into the corresponding position of the driver board. If the colors marked on the servo wire and the driver board do not match, use a multimeter to test. The red wire is for the positive pole and the black wire is for the negative pole.
When there are too many servos, the wires tend to get messed up. If a certain wire becomes loose, it will be troublesome to check. What I do is: first draw a wiring diagram on paper and mark which channels servos No. 1 to 16 are connected to. Then prepare some zip ties or Velcro to tie the wires in the same direction together. Another thing is to label each wire and write the number. If you want to adjust the position of a certain servo in the future, you will know which wire it is by looking at the label, without having to go through each wire one by one.
After all the wires are connected, don't rush to write complicated control programs. First, burn the simplest test code to make the No. 1 servo rotate 90 degrees back and forth. If No. 1 can work normally, it means there is no problem with power supply and communication. Then test No. 2, No. 3, until No. 16, to ensure that each channel can be controlled. This step of troubleshooting is much less troublesome than having to rework if there is a problem, and it allows you to have a good idea of the wiring results.
If a certain servo doesn't work, don't panic and check it in order. First check to see if the wiring of that channel is loose, try replacing it with a Dupont wire; then check to see if there is any problem with the servo itself, connect it to a normally working channel and test it; then check whether the power supply voltage is sufficient, use a multimeter to measure whether the voltage between V+ and GND is normal. This process is like a detective solving a case, eliminating them one by one. Most of the cases are caused by poor connections or wrong wiring sequence.
After talking so much about wiring, I wonder what kind of situation you have encountered during the actual wiring process? Is it a power supply problem that causes the servo to shake, or is there too many wires that I don’t know how to sort out? You are welcome to tell us about your experience in the comment area, like it so that more people can see this article, and you are also welcome to forward it to your friends who are playing with servos.
Update Time：2026-02-17
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