I'm a mechanical engineering student at San Diego State U. My team (4 people) has to build a mars rover type vehicle that will fit in a 12x8x6" box including all control equipment, cross 2, 36" canyons, retrieve a rock, and then get back across the gaps. I'll give full details to anyone who wants them, but it would take forever to type all the rules here. Anyway...

I've never worked with electronics before except in my Microcontroller class, which is only an introduction. I need to see some kind of schematic for wiring a potentiometer to drive a pair of gates (like pinball flappers) that will be used as the rock retrieving arms. The pots at RAdio Shack all have 3 prongs, that part makes sense. But, I don't know which wire to put where, or how to connect the potentiometer to the servo. Can anyone help? Thanks!!

 

The center lug on the pot is the slider, the two lugs on either side are the ends of the resistance. Is the servo motor driving the pot, or is the pot controling the servo? Is the pot part of the position feedback?

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if i am rgt

there are 3 pins ina potmeter......

the 3 are different in nature...2 are for the resistance and the other is grounded....

use a multimeter...

if u connect 2 pins and adjust the potmeter...and the resistance changes....then they are the resistor pins an the other one must be left alon as a dummy..........

try changing the pins and test.........


this is the trail and error method and the only one i know

 

Sorry, but you are totally incorrect - Russlk above correctly described the connections to a potentiometer (commonly shortened to pot).

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