Servo pointer gauge

A knob steers a servo — the start of a robot arm or an analog gauge.

Open in Circuit Lab Simulator

Interactive Simulation

Servo follows a knobarduino-uno

Open in Lab

Required Components Checklist

Assembly Steps

Wire the servo

Brown to GND, red to 5V, orange to pin 9.

Wire the knob

Outer pins to 5V and GND, middle pin to A0.

Map and move

map(analogRead(A0), 0, 1023, 0, 180) gives the angle for servo.write().

Arduino Sketch

#include <Servo.h>

Servo arm;

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

void loop() {
  int raw = analogRead(A0);
  int angle = map(raw, 0, 1023, 0, 180);
  arm.write(angle);
  Serial.print("angle: ");
  Serial.println(angle);
  delay(50);
}

Challenges & Extensions

Ready to take this project further? Try these challenges:

•Limit the movement to 30–150°.
•Smooth the motion by moving one degree at a time.
•Turn it into a light meter with an LDR instead of the knob.