Ah, a board with R/C PWM servo ports. That's a 1970s interface which should have been replaced by now. There are servos with a bidirectional serial interface, so you can ask what the actuator is doing, but they're overpriced.[1] They're about 5x-10x as expensive as standard R/C servos.<p>There was an open source project, OpenServo, to do something about this, but it was done by 2008 and seems to be dormant. [2] There's no multi-manufacturer standard for servos above the dumb level.<p>Annoying things in low-end robotics: 1) motor controllers with significant power handling cost too much, although this is improving, 2) encoders cost too much, although they're simple and every mouse wheel has one, and 3) encoders are usually fragile plastic add-ons to motors with strong metal cases, instead of being integrated inside the motor case.<p>[1] <a href="http://www.trossenrobotics.com/c/robotis-dynamixel-robot-servos.aspx" rel="nofollow">http://www.trossenrobotics.com/c/robotis-dynamixel-robot-ser...</a>
[2] <a href="https://openservo.org/" rel="nofollow">https://openservo.org/</a>