Aurdino Mega TCB

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baldrick131
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Re: Aurdino Mega TCB

Post by baldrick131 »

LukeZ wrote:Hi Rick, I'm very impressed. You went from a self-confessed novice to a professional circuit board designer in very little time! And now you absolutely do have something you made yourself which is very cool.

I'm interested in the green and red connectors on your final design. If I had to guess it looks like you've provided convenient power taps to your two drive ESCs (green), and I guess the two reds are one for the battery and a second for powering other stuff?

As you mentioned there have been several other users who have made up their own designs and it's always interesting to watch as each one takes a slightly different approach. I very much like what you have done, it is clear to me you put a lot of thought into what you needed and what could be let go. Some features have been left off, but what remains probably does 100% of what 90% of users would ever want, and in exchange you have gained something easy to assemble, small, and I'm guessing also inexpensive; all worthy advantages.

My hat's off to you, and I'll look forward to seeing it in your next project. (I just checked out your Brummbar by the way, it's fantastic!)


Luke
Thank you Luke I'm glad you like what I created from your design.
And yes the colour coded connectors are an idea I got from a cheap barrel smoker set we're the different connectors we're coloured.
The 2 red ones and the 2 green ones are all connected to the battery I added a second battery connector to provide a supply to the BEC that powers the cannon smoke unit and like you worked out the green ones for the battery supply to the Esc's hopefully doing away with some spaghetti in the finished model.
The connectors for the smoke unit and auxiliary output (used for the fan) are in blue. I put mosfets for these as I had seen them used for the outputs on other boards when a higher output was needed as a novice I'm not sure if this is correct but seeing as they are supplying a resistor and motor it makes sense to be over rated.
I am thinking of getting another of the Aurdino boards and fitting double header connectors so it can be fitted on the TCB with the ability to have a second board fitted on top of it that can have a version of the OP sound board fitted or IR battle capability to make it even more versatile.
I still have no clue how any of the components work but I am interested to see what I can achieve.
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baldrick131
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Re: Aurdino Mega TCB

Post by baldrick131 »

I would like to give LukeZ a big thank you for posting my files on the Open Panzer forum Download section :thumbup:
https://openpanzer.org/forum/index.php? ... e=download
So if you want to build one yourself all the files to get the PCB's made (JLPcb is where I got them from it cost me £26 most of which was postage to have 5 "min order" made and delivered to the UK in about 2 weeks).
The Bill of Materials has all the components and suppliers listed but as I am in the UK Listed most of the parts from RS but that was mainly for reference purposes as RS are quite expensive but it doesn't take much effort to cross reference the info to get cheaper alternatives from ebay and cheaper suppliers although some of the components for the power supply were quite pricey no matter where I found them.
The Aruino and the ECU's I got from Aliexpress for not a lot of money so it was cheaper and easier to use ECU,s to power any motors rather than make the PCB bigger to accommodate the extra components to do the job.
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LukeZ
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Re: Aurdino Mega TCB

Post by LukeZ »

Hi Rick, sorry for the slow reply, but I'm glad you saw the files. Thanks for being willing to share those with the community and I hope someone else will find them useful. I've also posted a note in the DIY TCB designs thread on the Open Panzer forum so people can find it that way too.

A propos of your earlier message about considering a future design to incorporate more features, you certainly could and I suspect with what you have learned so far you will find it hard to stop experimenting and expanding. ;) In the meantime I think it was a great decision to do something simple and straightforward that pretty much anybody could build. Given that DIY is at present really the only avenue available to us, I hope this design inspires more people to give it a try who otherwise might have been intimidated by something more complicated.
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baldrick131
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Re: Aurdino Mega TCB

Post by baldrick131 »

LukeZ wrote:Hi Rick, sorry for the slow reply, but I'm glad you saw the files. Thanks for being willing to share those with the community and I hope someone else will find them useful. I've also posted a note in the DIY TCB designs thread on the Open Panzer forum so people can find it that way too.

A propos of your earlier message about considering a future design to incorporate more features, you certainly could and I suspect with what you have learned so far you will find it hard to stop experimenting and expanding. ;) In the meantime I think it was a great decision to do something simple and straightforward that pretty much anybody could build. Given that DIY is at present really the only avenue available to us, I hope this design inspires more people to give it a try who otherwise might have been intimidated by something more complicated.
No problem I've already got an amplifier shield and micro Sd shield just got to get a teensy board and I can start working out how it goes together
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Re: Aurdino Mega TCB

Post by whitecitadel »

What a great project, I looked at OP but saw there was no board supply, I missed the thread on the generic Mega2560 until recently and it’s great to see a simple external board will give most of the core functions.

I just finished making a light controller for my crawler that uses SMD and decided I was not ready for another SMD project… but as this is all through hole I might give it a try, especially as it does not look like any of the components are particularly “exotic” or hard to find.

I think I might consider tweaking it though as I have quite a few sbus receivers and they would need inverting but that seems quite trivial to implement from what I read on the interwebs.

I ordered the “pro” mega board with the headers you used from Banggood (they had stock in uk and price was good) but I am tempted to get a full size mega to breadboard things out like you did Baldrick.
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Re: Aurdino Mega TCB

Post by john1970 »

If i read this right the firmware you used was the open panzer firmware?
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Re: Aurdino Mega TCB

Post by Sub »

Hi,
John1970 and whitectadel.
I have just finished doing my fourth Arduino Mega 2560 DIY board.
I don't know if you are members of the Open Panzer forum but if you are or join it there are some excellent posts with diagrams showing you ( with wiring diagrams ) and telling you how to make up a fully working all singing and dancing TCB with the standard board, ( menu, forum, tcb dev, then diy tcb firmware ).
i personally use the full size 2560 board as it is easier to work on and see what you are doing and i use Dupont male to male connectors.
One thing of note is that by using a Mega 2560 you download the latest Hex file for the DIY version from the drop down menu, look out for a Mega that uses the square 16 U2 chip for the usb connection, as you do not need any additional drivers, ( other than the OP drivers that Luke shows you) if you choose a board with the oblong CH340 chip then you will need to install the CH340 drivers first.
Amazon are doing a good deal for the Elegoo Mega 2560 at present and this has the square 16 u2 chip installed.
Hope the info is of use and it is very straight forward to do,
the results are excellent, and there is lots of help if you need it.
Regards
Sub.
whitecitadel
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Re: Aurdino Mega TCB

Post by whitecitadel »

Thanks sub, I can cope with the CH340 if needed, I spotted the elgoo and one of the maker shops has another brand of full size board about the same price (clone). Pretty sure all the “pro” small format boards are copy boards who CH340 chips from what I could see.

I have been digesting the open panzer forum but not got around to signing up yet, do plan to do so.

Teensy sound card looks interesting too, but the 3.2 looks to be in short supply having a look around usual suppliers.
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Re: Aurdino Mega TCB

Post by john1970 »

I bought an Elegoo Mega 2560 and MPU 6050 off Amazon last week with the idea of fitting it to a Leo 2. I will go over to the open panzer forum and sign up and have a look around. thanks for the reply
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LukeZ
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Re: Aurdino Mega TCB

Post by LukeZ »

Hi chaps, I see there have been some posts here. I hope you have success with your "Baldock Shield" experiments and I'm sure he as well as I will be interested to hear your results.

WhiteCitadel, you are right that it will not be too hard to invert the SBUS signal. If there were an improvement to this board that could be made, it would be to include that functionality. Another would have been to provide a header for the MOTOR SERIAL output, in order to be able to use dual motor serial controllers like the Dimension Engineering Sabertooths, but I suppose not many people use those. It would however not have required any additional components.

As for the SBUS, you can follow the TCB schematic to see how it was done on the original TCB, it just requires a transistor and a couple resistors.

Or you can check Oscar Liang's website, he shows where you can get the non-inverted signal straight from certain SBUS receivers, if you happen to be using one of those receivers and don't mind soldering on to it.

You can also buy cheap little SBUS inverter boards from AliExpress and other places, here is an example.
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