SunFounder PCA9685 16 Channel 12 Bit PWM Servo Driver for Arduino and Raspberry Pi

by people ...

Product Specifications

Contain an I2C-controlled PWM driver with a built-in clock. It means, unlike the TLC5940 family, you do not need to continuously send it signals tying up your microcontroller; it’s completely free running!
5V compliant, which means you can control it from a 3.3V microcontroller and still safely drive up to 6V outputs (this is good when you want to control white or blue LEDs with 3.4+ forward voltages)
Support using only two pins to control 16 free-running PWM outputs – you can even chain up 62 breakouts to control up to 992 PWM outputs
3 pin connectors in groups of 4, so you can plug in 16 servos at one time (Servo plugs are slightly wider than 0.1” so you can only stack 4 next to each other on 0.1” header
12-bit resolution for each output - for servos, that means about 4us resolution at 60Hz update rate

Product Description

For more information, please view at http://wiki.sunfounder.cc/index.php?title=PCA9685_16_Channel_12_Bit_PWM_Servo_Driver

Introduction PCA9685 16-Channel 12-Bit PWM Servo Driver can help a lot when there are insufficient PWM output pins for the MCU in your project. The only condition is that the main control chip supports I2C communication, which means enabling the communication between the chip and PCA9685, so as to control multiple servos simultaneously.

Component List - 1 * PCA9685 16-Channel 12-Bit PWM Servo Driver

Product Reviews

Controlling a RC car with a Raspberry PI. Using …

Controlling a RC car with a Raspberry PI. Using it to build an autonomous car, called Donkey Car dot com. Only using 2 channels, and have had no issues.

Easy Setup, Cuts down chatter, great for rPi

Easy I2c setup with raspberry pi.. Really cuts down on servo chatter and can control more servos than you are going to need.

Five Stars

Tested with an UNO and 12 Servos, worked as expected…

Good Servo Driver / Using with Raspberry Pi

I like this servo driver, so far so good - no issues. I like that it is already soldered and comes with capacitor which will prevent voltage drops when using multiple servos (however I’ve not tested more than 2 servos yet so I can’t confirm). Price is good and quality high. I will write an update in couple of months as I’m using it to open / close some tiny doors few times daily, we will see how it performs after some time.

Works just fine Arduino UNO and MEGA

I bought two of these things to go with my Arduino MEGA and also an UNO. The Arduino(s) drive this board, and then I used the PWM outputs to drive logic level MOSFETS which in turn control 12V 1-amp LEDs. You can get the PCA9685 library from AdaFruit that Arduino uses to control the board.Everything works great! I’ve got LEDs all over the place and am worried that I might be starting to hallucinate from all of the flashing and strobing. :(