MobiFlight Community Support

Welcome to the forum for MobiFlight! Feel free to reach out to the community in case you have questions, issues or just want to share great ideas or details about your latest home cockpit project.

You like MobiFlight? Donate via PayPal and support the MobiFlight development. Thanks! 

05/03/2024 - This forum is read-only

The community support for MobiFlight has moved exclusively over to our Discord server. Register for free and enjoy more interactive functions like image and video upload, voice chat. More than 7,000 registered users around the world make it a great experience!

See you on our MobiFlight Community Discord server.

A HUGE Thank You to everyone who participated in the forum, especially obviously to Pizman and Stephan who did an outstanding job over so many years providing an incredible service to the MobiFlight community.

The forum is still providing a lot of good content, hence we keep this information accessible.

Index > MobiFlight Projects > When using a stepper or a servo ?
icon
Message #17327
Avatar
jlr91
Posts: 9
Hi,
I have a basic question.
When should I use a stepper (for which instrument in fact) and when a servo ?
I'd like to build a Cessna panel.
Regards
Jean-Luc
2020-01-31 19:03
Message #17338
Avatar
StephanHo
Moderator
From: EDDG, Germany
Posts: 1867
Supporter
Hi Jean-Luc,

whether you use a stepper or a servo depends on your skills and capabilities.

A servo basically only rotates in the range from 0 to 180 degrees, i.e. a semicircle. This range can be expanded with a gear reduction. There could also be a space problem because most servos are larger than the steppers.
It is often perceived as a disadvantage of the servos that they tend to shake and sometimes run restlessly.

Steppers cover the area of ​​360 degrees. You can also rotate 360 ​​degrees several times (compass, heading, etc.).
Steppers are very quiet and do not need a gear.
The 28BYJ-48 5V with the ULN2003 interface is popular and is used very frequently.
A stepper should not be supplied with power by the Mega module because they have a higher power requirement. It is therefore recommended to use an external power supply.

In terms of price, steppers are usually cheaper than servos. There are already cheap servos for 3 euros on ebay, but there is also the above-mentioned stepper for almost half.

If you want to know which gauges you use a stepper for, see this topic:

https://www.mobiflight.com/forum/message/3027.html

You can also use the forum search.
Grüße,
Stephan (Time: UTC+2)
2020-01-31 22:32
Message #17354
Avatar
jlr91
Posts: 9
Hi Stephan,
Thanks for your answer. That's exactly the info I was looking for.
I did a search before asking but got nothing about comparison.
regards,
Jean-Luc
2020-02-01 09:20
Message #17507
Avatar
VR-FlightSim
From: United Kingdom
Posts: 99
Supporter
Here's a comparison video "stepper vs servo" both running the same offset (engine RPM)

https://flic.kr/p/2hRpWYT

Jay
2020-02-05 16:14
icon
Index > MobiFlight Projects > When using a stepper or a servo ?