MaestroServo

Pololu Maestro Servo controller adapter

This adapter lets you use servos together with your microscope equipment. We are using this in the lab to move a half wave plate in and out of the laser beam path under computer control (directing laser output to either of two fibers, due to a polarizing beam splitter in the light path). The adapter has been tested under Windows, but should also work on Linux.

To use this adapter, first download and install the drivers and control software from Pololu. Make sure that your servo works with the Pololu software, using their excellent documentation as a guide. in the Pololu software, under the “Serial Settings” tab, select “USB Dual Port”. The Pololu will create two additional virtual COM ports on your computer. In the Micro-Manager Hardware Configuration Manager, select the first of those two ports. The serial port settings should not matter (but I like to set the baud rate to 57600 anyways;). Set the minimum and maximum position to something reasonable (this depends on your servo, some servos do not like extreme settings, see the Pololu documentation for details, I use 900-2000).

Limitations: This adapter is written to work with only a single Maestro controller. The code also compiles on the Mac, but there does not seem to be a driver that makes the controller appear as a serial port on Mac OS X.