Intro to the Open Panzer Project - and a new Control Board

This forum relates to the Open Source Tank Control Board (TCB). Please read the sticky and visit the main site to find out all about the board and how to install it.
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LukeZ
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Re: Intro to the Open Panzer Project - and a new Control Boa

Post by LukeZ »

The TCB is on sale once more at Hobby King: Click Here

Not quite as discounted as their previous sale but still a good deal.
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LukeZ
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Re: Intro to the Open Panzer Project - and a new Control Boa

Post by LukeZ »

TCB still on sale from this year's Black Friday, half-off: approximately $29 US from the Global warehouse.
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c.rainford73
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Re: Intro to the Open Panzer Project - and a new Control Boa

Post by c.rainford73 »

Hi Luke, just grabbed my board over the weekend. Unbelievable price. On another note any update on the taigen sound cards in different versions
Tanks alot.... :wave:
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LukeZ
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Re: Intro to the Open Panzer Project - and a new Control Boa

Post by LukeZ »

You'll have to ask Erik over at Taigen about their sound cards. I believe I heard there were more in the works but I don't know if they've been released yet.
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LukeZ
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Re: Intro to the Open Panzer Project - and a new Control Boa

Post by LukeZ »

The TCB has been out-of-stock at Hobby King now for several months. After emails too numerous to count, I finally reached a real human being yesterday who informed me that this is not a temporary state of affairs, but rather that Hobby King has decided to discontinue production due to insufficient sales.

In the roughly one year that the TCB was available HK sold approximately 500 units. That's not much by HK standards but for a one-man open source project, selling into one of the smallest market segments of the entire RC industry, it seems to me like a respectable success and really it's a lot farther than I thought this would make it in the beginning.

I am not certain where the project will go from here. The sound card development was finally brought to a mature stage late last year, but although it can operate as a standalone device with common RC equipment, I'm not sure it makes sense to pursue it further without the TCB to accompany it. Manufacturing has always been the weak point of this endeavor. It's unclear to me if that can be overcome again, but if something transpires I will certainly announce it here as well as in the Project Status thread over on the Open Panzer forums.

In the meantime I will of course continue to support those who already purchased TCBs, and as always all schematics, source files and firmware remain completely open source for what it's worth.
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dane61
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Re: Intro to the Open Panzer Project - and a new Control Boa

Post by dane61 »

That is really sad news. Im enjoying the one board I have, and was prepaired to buy more when taigen or OP sound was ready.
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Re: Intro to the Open Panzer Project - and a new Control Boa

Post by jimbo_wa »

Only finding out about Open Panzer a month ago and snagging the last board in the UK warehouse, this is bad news.

I was also wanting to purchase further boards, and I'm not confident in creating one from the plans.

Thanks for all your hard work Luke, you achieved a major win in getting them produced commercially!

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c.rainford73
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Re: Intro to the Open Panzer Project - and a new Control Boa

Post by c.rainford73 »

I have my third one ready to be installed on my work bench for an upcoming build and really enjoyed the opportunity to use them. Hope you can find another way to produce these as I feel many more people in the hobby will have missed out on your great product. :thumbup:
Tanks alot.... :wave:
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Re: Intro to the Open Panzer Project - and a new Control Boa

Post by Kaczor »

I was lucky to purchase two unis on sale. I'm very happy with OP. Now I'm waiting only for Benedini sound cards. My Sherman runs very smoothly. Other will be in friend's Panther.
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Re: Intro to the Open Panzer Project - and a new Control Boa

Post by wibblywobbly »

Sad news indeed. If I had to put my finger on the reason for the low sales I would say that selling the board alone was the reason. If it had been packaged as a TCB with esc's and a sound card, it would have been a one stop shop. Excellent though the board is, there are many in the RC hobby who don't know enough about electronics to even consider setting something like this up. One look at all of the questions about 'where does this plug go on an RX18' will demonstrate that if someone has never owned anything RC before, then they are going to take one look at the TCB and then go and buy a plug and play board.

You can add the SBUS to the conundrum, the TCB needs a new tx and rx, which adds to the cost, and the complications, for a newbie.

This meant that in a low volume hobby, there are only a small number of hobbyists that would venture into the TCB domain, less than 500 it seems?

I am not knocking the TCB at all, it is a wondrous piece of kit, and having seen HL attempting to produce a decent board I do wonder whether they would be interested in taking the project on. The work has been done, it just needs someone to get it into mass production, as a one stop install. If it ran off PWM it would open the market considerably, but getting it to work with HL's unique split signal system would be impossible. The magic number for mass sales is probably £100 for an install, if a large scale manufacturer could get the system running at a factory cost of £20-40 it would make it viable for them to take it on.

:(
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