Adafruit 16-Channel 12-bit PWM/Servo Driver with I2C Interface

Unlike another reviewer I got exactly what is shown here. The board soldered up great and works wonderfully. I wish it included the pin header for both sides of the board. You don't need this to use it, it's only used for daisy chaining many of these boards together. Still it would have been nice to have.If you're going to run servos with this board you're going to want to put a capacitor on the board. The capacitor is not included however there are solder pads for a capacitor. A good rule of thumb is 100uF capacitor size for each servo you're going to drive. Or just do it right and put a big one on there. I put a 470uF 36v capacitor from Radio Shack on there and I'm running two mini servos off the 5v bus on the pi. But a 10v capacitor would be better, they're smaller and would fit better.There are no included instructions and no good pinout even on Adafruit's learning website. Adafruiut has a good set of sample code on their web site. Here is the pinout I used for my Pi B+Pi GND (Pin 25) -> Servo board GND PinPi SCL (Pin 5) -> Servo board SCL PinPi SDA (Pin 3) -> Servo Board SDA PinPi 3.3V (Pin 1) -> Servo Board VCC PinPi 5V (Pin 4) -> Servo Board V+ Pin

It does take a little work to assemble, but that is half the fun of doing these projects. It would help to place a nice big red marking on the external power connector so one does not connect the 5volt lines backwards. A little dab of fingernail polish does the trick.

What I actually got was 16 x 12-bit PWM & Servo Shield. It is the same IC but it is designed to go over top of the Arduino, so it is quite a bit larger. I am thinking about returning it but I also need to use this IC for my project, so I will probably just keep it. Buyer beware, you might not get the item pictured...

Came in ESD proof case, there were no problems with the package and the device works as shown on the adafruit website. The board is very useful board for controlling LEDs or Servos and a great development platform for the PCA9685

As advertised.

Have used this to control many PWM devices. I wish there was a way to have different frequency intervals for each block of 4 outputs. When connecting to different types of devices which require widely varying frequency ranges, I ended up having to use multiple of these units. However, the unit does work as described. Online PDF documentation on the chip helps to understand how the board operates. Note: this isn't for the novice hobbyist as there are a number of settings that have to be setup correctly some requiring a fair bit of math to get correct. But once you do get all the pieces together (per the documentation), the board works well.

Used this on a high-altitude balloon launch (NASA HASP program - went to 122.000 feet for 18 hours) and it worked like a champ.

This provides an easy interface for using multiple servos (or PWM LED strips). I'm docking a star due to some of the flukiness with the I2C interface, though. When attached to an Arduino or ESP8266 (breakout), the chip seems to lock up for several seconds during startup. It works fine after that, though.