Maria Servo Controller

Maria’s hardware (schematics and firmware) - Download

Marias’s software (DLL library) - Download

Introduction

Maria Servo Controller is a system for controlling up to 16 servo motors through USB port. It consists of two main parts: 1 – The hardware. That is a very simple board with a microcontroller. 2 – The software. That is a library developed in C# that enables you to construct programs to communicate with the hardware. You can download here all resources you need to build your own Maria.

This is the personal project I’m working right now. So, any comments, suggestions, corrections, etc. are very welcome.

Hardware

Maria’s hardware is extremely simple. Its main component is a PIC-18F4550 microcontroller that costs about $5.00. It also has one USB connector and one power supply connector. But you can replace the first by an old USB mouse cable and the later can be eliminated if you connect the power supply (5Vdc) directly into the Maria’s circuit. The circuit can be build in a printed circuit board (PCB) or in a bread board. All these details are up to you. Here it is a picture of a board that I did using one of those multipurpose PCBs.

The picture bellow shows the circuit schematic of Maria. In addition of building the circuit you need also to record the firmware in the microcontroller. You can download the firmware here.

Software

Maria enables you to build your own programs to control your servo motors. This is done using the classes available at this library. It was written in C#. So, in order to use it, you need to make your program using one of the languages supported by .NET framework.

Depicted bellow there is a sample code showing the basic usage of the library. This is a completely functional program that makes some moves with two servo motors.

Here it is a tutorial go guide you in your firsts steps with the library.

Demo application

If you don’t want to make your own program you can try this demo application. Its use is very intuitively. It doesn’t require any line of code. Everything is done by a graphic interface. This is the best way of testing your board.

I hope to write soon a tutorial on how to use all functionalities of this program.

Note: You need the .NET framework v3.5 to run it.

Documentation

Here are some texts that teach you how to use Maria:

Library tutorial

Demo application tutorial (coming soon)

Full library documentation (coming soon)

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