This morning I woke up around 5:30AM to catch the lunar eclipse. It was pretty nice: totality began around 6:05AM and the moon became incredibly dark and red. But 30 minute later, it had progressed low enough that it entered the offshore clouds that signaled the arrival of the morning fog. So, I came back, and went to bed.

When I woke up, I knew that I wanted to try something easy with my Arduino. A few weeks ago, I was in a Radio Shack (gasp!) and saw that they carried the Parallax servos (rebranded Futaba servos, if memory serves) so I picked one up, thinking “I should hook this to an Arduino, because I’ve never done that.”

Well, so I did.

So… what can I do with this?

I could use it to pan a webcam back and forth, perhaps under control of a web page.

I could hook up an ultrasonic sensor, and scan for obstacles.

I could rotate an object, and create an animated gif allowing you to see all sides

And ultimately, I could do some kind of animatronic thing.

I know, it’s not very impressive. But it’s a start. And as I’ve heard before, the journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.