Volz

[Yuri Pederi]

Kevin, Evan, hope this finds you well. We are considering to upgrade onboard servos to Volz. In the manual you recommend to use RS485 protocol via TPU channels. Does each servo need 1 TPU channel? I'm not sure if we have enough TPUs. If so, can PWM preset servo channels to be converted in RS485? Attaching the .vrs file. Thanks, Yuri

[Evan Schellenberg]

Hi Yuri,

Only one UART is used in the autopilot (so 2 TPU lines), not one for each servo. If the servos use RS-485 then they would all be connected together in an RS-485 network, so that the autopilot can address all of them through the one UART.

The protocol requires you to enter the servo ID's into the fields given in the manual so that when the autopilot sends a servo packet it will have the servo ID, so the servo with the matching ID will accept and use it.

See the first image in this link for an example two wire RS-485 network: http://www.bb-elec.com/Learning-Center/All-White-Papers/Serial/RS-4...

You should double check the Volz instructions though in case there is something unique with your exact servos (or the ones you are interested in getting), but the above image is the general method for RS-485 devices and is how the protocol is designed to work with the Volz servos.

The RS-485 lines would also be connected to a TTL to RS-485 adapter that goes to the UART on the autopilot (where the RS-485 master is labelled in the image linked above).

Evan Schellenberg
MicroPilot Support

[Yuri Pederi]

Thanks Evan, that's very helpful.