How to make a battle system

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wibblywobbly
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How to make a battle system

Post by wibblywobbly »

Part 1, Part 2 is below


This seems like a topic that confuses members, and if you have never dabbled in soldering or electronic parts before, you would probably go and buy an IR battle system ready made.

If only you knew how cheap the parts are, you would probably give it a go. This same process works for Tamiya, IBU and Clark. The Elmod system still uses a 5 pin plug, but they run the emitter led through theirs which cuts down on wiring.

So, a brief explanation of what a battle system is:

In non-scientific terms

An IR emitter sends a coded pulse of invisible infra red light when the gun is fired.
An IR sensor detects the pulse.
When the IR sensor detects the pulse it does two things.
1. Flashes the hit led's.
2. Sends a signal to the pcb to reduce power to the motors.

You don't need to understand why, how etc, it is all done automatically. All that you need to do is make the battle system.

You will need:
4 x IR sensors. These have to be the same spec as these, which are what I use:
http://uk.farnell.com/vishay/tsop4838/i ... dp/4913190
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1 x IR emitter. The same spec as this one. This is what I use:
http://www.maplin.co.uk/p/940nm-infrare ... iode-yh70m
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1-4 normal 5v led's (it doesn't matter whether you use 1 or 4, as long as the led is visible when the tank is hit).
You can buy them on EBay, either 3mm or 5mm, 5v led's and any colour you want.

I will use a Tiger 1 cupola as an example of how to hide the sensors.

Drill 4 holes around the cupola. In this instance the cupola hinge has to be facing in a certain direction, so make sure that the holes are facing forwards, backwards, left and right.
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To leave room to get the cupola on when the sensors are behind it, I needed to carefully remove a part of the retaining lip.
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The wiring for the sensors will be directly under the hatch, so to allow a commander to be glued in place, I cut a circle of styrene and glued that under the hatch.
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Then carefully glue the sensors in place, and trim the legs back.
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Ok, that's the sensors all mounted.
Next I need to attach the wires.

The Clark site shows the pins 1-5 on the 5 pin IR socket.
What he has also done is describe the pins in the table underneath in non-standard terms.
You wouldn't have a clue how to wire IR sensors using his description.

This is what you need:

Clark board 5 pins described in correct terms

1 VCC Black
2 OUT Brown
3 GND Red
4 LED- Orange
5 LED+ Yellow

TSOP 4838

1 OUT Brown
2 GND Red
3 VCC Black


LED's
4 LED- Orange
5 LED+ Yellow

Emitter (Seperate plug with Green/Black wiring)
1 LED+ Green
2 LED- Black

Clark supplies a 5 pin plug as an optional extra with the colour coding as shown above. He also supplies the mini-plugs for the muzzle flash led, and the IR emitter, these have green/black wiring.
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This is as far as I can go today with this how-to, I am waiting for a new supply of heatshrink, when I have it I can solder some wires onto the sensors, and continue with the mini-saga.... :think:
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silversurfer1947
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Re: How to make a battle system

Post by silversurfer1947 »

Is it the same wiring if you are connecting to Tamiya electronics? I'm looking to fit my own IR to my Panther.
Richard
Tamiya Tiger 1, Taigen FlakPanzer IV,Torro M16 half-track, Tamiya Panther,WSN/Torro T34,Taigen M41 Bulldog,H/l/Taigen Sherman M4A3,H/L T90, Haya M3 Grant, Metal Origins 234/2 Puma, Nashorn by Alwyn. I was only going to have one tank - honest! :D
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wibblywobbly
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Re: How to make a battle system

Post by wibblywobbly »

This pic is from Clarks site.
tamiya to clark.jpg
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So, if

1 VCC Black
2 OUT Brown
3 GND Red
4 LED- Orange
5 LED+ Yellow

going into the Tamiya apple, then the black, brown, red, should still be VCC, OUT, and GND.

That's the way I see it anyway??
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Dr Phibes
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Re: How to make a battle system

Post by Dr Phibes »

Good stuff Mr Wobbly, this is just the sort of thing that is really needed and I hope you will keep it up. As you know I was trying to gather up this sort of information and it really is like trying to find dragons poo.
Just one little suggestion if I may; if you can provide further details on the specifications of the components you recommend, the options, and other technical stuff that would be most useful to geeks like me. I been building electronics for helis and multirotors for years (decades for the former) so I may be interested in designing my own battle systems too (whilst keeping them compatible with Tamiya, etc) so it's a lot of the technical information that is missing (all the manufacturers involved are very vague about this stuff). Anyway, thanks for doing this.
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wibblywobbly
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Re: How to make a battle system

Post by wibblywobbly »

Part 2, Part 3 is below

The next stage is to solder the wires onto the sensors.

I did the middle one first. This is the GND pin.
I used red to match the wire that goes to the plug.
One length of wire on each sensor.
Heatshrink on the solder joint.
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I did the right one second. This is the VCC pin.
I used black to match the wire that goes to the plug.
One length of wire on each sensor.
Heatshrink on the solder joint.
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I did the left one thirdly. This is the OUT pin.
I used white. It should really have been brown to match the wire that goes to the plug.
One length of wire on each sensor.
Heatshrink on the solder joint.
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So, now we have all the sensors installed, and three wires soldered to each one.
Now I simply twist each set of four wires together and solder them to keep them twisted and secure.
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Now we only have three sets of wire coming off the four sensors.

These can be soldered to the wires from the plug.
Red to red.
White (pretend it is brown) to brown.
Black to black.
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That's all of the sensors hooked up.
Just thread the plug down through the bottom of the hatch, depending on the tank, you may need to drill a hole. The Tiger already has a BB hole, I just drilled a hole underneath as well, in the BB chute.

Part 3 will cover the 'Hit' led's.
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Re: How to make a battle system

Post by AlwynTurner »

Great piece of informative and valuable posting Rob, I will be putting this in my browser favourites for when I finish the nashorn and maybe make that a battler! Many thanks :clap: :clap: :thumbup: :wave:
Alwyn
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wibblywobbly
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Re: How to make a battle system

Post by wibblywobbly »

Part 3, final part and test.

Installing 'Hit' led's.

You can put these wherever you want, and you can have just one, or up to four.
Use 5v ones, any colour.
They can be 3mm or 5mm dia.

In this case, I am superbright 5mm 5v ones.
I am only installing three, as I can hide three, but not four.
One is in the recess in the rear bin.
The other two are behind the smoke dischargers.
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These came prewired. If you are wiring your own remember that all led's have two legs.
The long leg is + positive, the short leg is -negative.
You cannot blow an led by getting the polarity wrong.
You can blow an led by using a 3v led on a 5v power supply.

Take all of the positive wires and twist them together.
Solder them to stop them unravelling.
Take all of the negative wires and twist them together.
Solder them to stop them unravelling.
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Solder the orange negative wire from the plug to the black negative wires from the led's.
Solder the yellow positive wire from the plug to the red positive wires from the led's.
IMG_20160812_113221.jpg
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That's all of the battle system wiring done, and all connected to the 5 pin plug.

Now tidy the wiring up using cable ties, self adhesive clamps etc. You need to make sure that once the turret is reassembled, no wiring is going to get trapped in the turret rotation gears, servo's etc.
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Last part, installing an IR Emitter:

Depending on your tank the emitter can be installed in all sorts of places.
It should be mounted so that it follows the barrel elevation and traverse.
The Tiger has a handy hole in the mantlet, so I am using that.
The led must be mounted in a tube.
The tip of the led must be 9mm from the end of the tube.
A 17mm piece of styrene tube is about right.
In my example the mantlet is quite thick, so I have simply added a shorter tube inside so that I get the magical 9mm length.

Same rule as before for soldering +/-, long leg, short leg.
If using a Clark board solder the black wire to the short leg and the green one to the long leg.
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I made a clamp, so that if the led blows (very unlikely) it can be removed very easily.
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All installed
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Attachments
IMG_20160812_115112.jpg
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silversurfer1947
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Re: How to make a battle system

Post by silversurfer1947 »

Stupid question time. Styrene tube is sold by its external diameter. What diameter tube has the correct bore for the emitter please?
Richard
Tamiya Tiger 1, Taigen FlakPanzer IV,Torro M16 half-track, Tamiya Panther,WSN/Torro T34,Taigen M41 Bulldog,H/l/Taigen Sherman M4A3,H/L T90, Haya M3 Grant, Metal Origins 234/2 Puma, Nashorn by Alwyn. I was only going to have one tank - honest! :D
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wibblywobbly
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Re: How to make a battle system

Post by wibblywobbly »

Part 3 continued

Reassemble the turret and check that all wiring is tidy, and out of harms way.
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Plug everything in. Make sure that the muzzle flash and IR emitter leds are plugged into the right sockets. They are identical plugs so it is easy to get them the wrong way around. It helps to label one of them with a piece of tape.
IMG_20160812_121710.jpg
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Video Test:

You can test the sensors on a Clark board, either by using a Clark remote, or any Sony TV handset.
Start the tank.
Point the remote at the tank.
Press 2.
You should hear the 'hit' sound and the led's should flash.

You can test the emitter with any digital camera or phone with a camera.
Hold the lens in front of the emitter.
Fire the gun.
The emitter flash will be visible on the camera screen.
The emitter flash is invisible to the naked eye as a mere human cannot see Infra Red light.

phpBB [video]
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wibblywobbly
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Re: How to make a battle system

Post by wibblywobbly »

silversurfer1947 wrote:Stupid question time. Styrene tube is sold by its external diameter. What diameter tube has the correct bore for the emitter please?
How the heck do I know, lol.
The only way that I would calculate is to look at the wall thickness.
Eg, if it has an external diameter of 7mm, and a wall thickness of 1mm then the tube is 1mm less wide internally on each side. Knock 2mm off the external diameter. That would leave a 5mm hollow up the centre.

Does that sound convincing?? :S
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