Humming Servo?

[kresty]

MCK-Y is having trouble with his steering servo & audio, I'm hoping folks have suggestions.  Maybe Lara just needs a stronger servo?

Since he's so heavy, the steering servo can't always shove the wheels over, so it keeps fighting and "hums".  If she wiggles him a little so the servo stops struggling, then its all happy.

The worse part is that the servo hum makes it into the audio channel and amplified.  If I unplug power & Arduino to the MP3 trigger, then the hum goes away.  (Of course then it won't play either).  I tried putting a monster cap across the power input, but that made it worse if anything.

Thoughts?  Obviously when it's stalling it also consumes a bunch of extra power, so maybe I should just get a bigger servo, however I assume Lara can manage to stall anything, in which case it might be nice to understand other ways of mitigating the interference....

[Toby]

I recommend a servo with a all metal gear.
The stall torque shouldn't be to low also.
My servo have a stall torque of 12kg-cm/208.3oz-in at 6V.

About the interferences: I think they maybe have something to to with the magnetic field of the blocked servo.
Maybe it would help to increase the distance between the Servo and the sound system.
But trying a more powerful Servo is maybe a bit easier

[kresty]

I might do that bigger servo.... If I take the MP3 trigger out of the loop (play from my phone) it's "great". Can still hear the servo faintly, but it's the actually servo, not an amplified version.