Servo class can't set "zero" for PWM

[riklaunim]

I'm playing with DRV8833 DC motor controller and it uses PWM to controll the motors ( http://www.pololu.com/product/2130 ). When I do:

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s = pyb.Servo(1)

It already starts the PWM with some value and motor starts. When I do:

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s.pulse_width(0)

Motor still moves but very very slowly (640 is returned by s.pulse_width()). I have to kill it with:

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 pyb.Pin('X1', pyb.Pin.OUT_PP).low()

Which is a not so good idea as the servo object would have to be recreated... pulse_width(0) should stop any PWM activiy (or some other class method).

[blmorris]

I'll look into this in some more depth later (posting from my phone now), but my initial guess is that PWM as implemented by the Servo class is different from the PWM needed by your DC motor controller. For the Servo class, the PWM signal indicates an angle for the servo to move to, there is a minimum and maximum pulse width but it is never zero. For a DC motor controller (guessing in this case, I'll look it up later) your speed is set by a duty cycle which can fully vary from 0 to 1. Duty cycle doesn't really have much meaning for a hobby servo control signal.
What you need to use is more likely the PWM function added recently to the Timer class by @dhylands, you can get it by updating the firmware on your pyboard.

[pythoncoder]

blmorris is right. A servo controller emits pulses with a repetition rate of 50Hz. The pulse width varies from roughly 600uS to 2.4mS. In other words the duty cycle never goes to zero, and doesn't extend much beyond 10%. For DC motor control you normally use a much higher repetition rate with a duty cycle from zero to 100%. The timer class offers support for such PWM, see http://micropython.org/doc/module/pyb/Timer

Regards, Pete