Servo angle positioning in Arduino - Mini Project: Build & Apply

Servo angle positioning

📖 Scenario: You have a small servo motor connected to your Arduino. You want to control its angle to point at different positions, like moving a pointer on a dial.

🎯 Goal: Build a simple Arduino program that sets a servo motor to specific angles step by step.

📋 What You'll Learn

Use the Servo library to control the servo motor

Create a variable to store the servo angle

Set the servo to different angles using the write() method

Print the current angle to the Serial Monitor

💡 Why This Matters

🌍 Real World

Servo motors are used in robotics, remote-controlled cars, and camera positioning. Learning to control servo angles helps build interactive devices.

💼 Career

Understanding servo control is useful for embedded systems engineers, robotics developers, and anyone working with hardware programming.

1

Setup Servo and initial angle

Include the Servo library, create a Servo object called myServo, and create an integer variable called angle set to 0.

Arduino

# Include Servo library
// Create Servo object myServo
// Create int variable angle and set to 0

Hint

Use #include <Servo.h> to include the library. Then declare Servo myServo; and int angle = 0;.

2

Attach servo to pin and start Serial

In the setup() function, attach myServo to pin 9 using myServo.attach(9), and start the Serial communication at 9600 baud with Serial.begin(9600).

Arduino

#include 
Servo myServo;
int angle = 0;

void setup() {
  // Attach servo to pin 9
  // Start Serial at 9600 baud
}

void loop() {
  // Your code here
}

Hint

Use myServo.attach(9); inside setup() to connect the servo. Use Serial.begin(9600); to start serial communication.

3

Set servo angle and print it

In the loop() function, use myServo.write(angle) to set the servo angle, then print the angle using Serial.println(angle). Increase angle by 30 each loop. If angle is greater than 180, reset it to 0. Add a delay of 1000 milliseconds at the end.

Arduino

#include 
Servo myServo;
int angle = 0;

void setup() {
  myServo.attach(9);
  Serial.begin(9600);
}

void loop() {
  // Set servo angle
  // Print angle
  // Increase angle by 30
  // Reset angle if greater than 180
  // Wait 1 second
}

Hint

Use myServo.write(angle); to move the servo. Print the angle with Serial.println(angle);. Increase angle by 30 and reset if over 180. Use delay(1000); to wait.

4

Display servo angle on Serial Monitor

Upload the program and open the Serial Monitor. The program should print the servo angle every second, cycling through 0, 30, 60, 90, 120, 150, 180, then back to 0.

Arduino

#include 
Servo myServo;
int angle = 0;

void setup() {
  myServo.attach(9);
  Serial.begin(9600);
}

void loop() {
  myServo.write(angle);
  Serial.println(angle);
  angle += 30;
  if (angle > 180) {
    angle = 0;
  }
  delay(1000);
}

// Upload and observe output in Serial Monitor

Hint

Open the Serial Monitor at 9600 baud to see the angles printed every second.