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

[LukeZ]

PS - Would you prefer a seperate section in here for the TCB, like we have for the other boards? I can create one and move this thread into it, so that all Open Panzer discussions are in the one place.

That would be ok with me. In general, I will say the best place to get help is on the Open Panzer forums, which keeps things centralized so others can easily find answers to questions in one place. But at the same time everyone has their favorite tank forum and I understand discussions are going to occur all over the internet, so it's fine with me to create a new subforum. Here at RCTankWarfare it probably does make sense, given the way you have the electronics section organized.

I will just caution people that I might not see new threads right away - I see posts to this thread because i'm subscribed to it, but for new threads entirely I would have to proactively check the forum and I may not do that every day.

[wibblywobbly]

I'll set it up with a sticky at the top directing forum members to the Open Panzer links, which should be the first port of call for anyone who wants to know about it.

The posts on this forum will be more related to installations on members tanks, and what they have done with them, Q&A etc.

[LukeZ]

That's great, I like it! Thanks Rob.

[c.rainford73]

That is most excellent

[Smaily]

Hello all, I am looking at this topic from beginning and this control board looks very nice. Question is, as I am not very skilled in programing stuff or even RC, is that board fine even for such user? I mean, I went through setup and guidelines available and does not looks like rocket science, but i would ask before getting disappointed (especially in this case, as there are people working on it for free, creating and selling of such board is not part of the job or financial income) .

Also, is there information, when corrected board would be available again on HK? Or what they plan to do with the ones which does not work properly?

[c.rainford73]

LukeZ here on the forum and also the Open Panzer forum is your best resource for anything open Panzer. It's a very nice board and simple to setup and operate. I kept mine and replaced the surface mounted mosfets. (not for the faint of heart) Those who returned thier boards recieved refunds from Hobby King. The Open Panzer website is chock full of details. On YouTube there are some very nice video for anyone interested in program and using Taigen recoil etc.

I have my sabertoooth speed control already and the reccomended radio and receiver. Just need the Benedini mini sound board

[wibblywobbly]

For anyone who has one up and running, is the servo recoil operating as nature intended. I'm not suggesting that it won't, I am just curious from a technical perspective as an Arduino board will struggle to power a servo recoil due to the way that the current goes through the board. The solution is either a capacitor or a separate 6v battery to power the servo. I am just wondering whether the TCB, being a custom pcb, has solved this by having an inbuilt servo power supply, eg if it works ok, then it has.

[LukeZ]

Hi Smaily - the normal user of the TCB doesn't have to know anything about programming. The code is public but only for developers to improve it, the end user can ignore it.

If you read the guides you have a good sense of what is involved. The TCB has many options which make it flexible, but it also means that no matter which choices you make, some setup is going to be required (in other words, making selections in the OP Config program, performing radio setup, etc...). So it is more work than for example a Taigen unit which is plug-and-play. On the other hand, when compared to something like the Clark I think it is no more effort, but different.

RC tanks in general can be rather complicated compared to other RC. There are lots of moving parts and wiring to manage. If it is your first RC tank, you might be just as happy to get a Taigen or Heng Long and see how you like it. Then if you feel you want more options, you can always upgrade the electronics later to the TCB or Clark or whatever.

Hobby King hasn't given me any timeline on the second release of boards, only that they have "ordered them." Information from them is typically vague and I would not make any predictions as to when we will see them.

I have no idea what they plan to do with the first run that was defective!

[wibblywobbly]

I have no idea what they plan to do with the first run that was defective!

I would happily take one off their hands, I never run lights on my tanks anyway,

[LukeZ]

For anyone who has one up and running, is the servo recoil operating as nature intended. I'm not suggesting that it won't, I am just curious from a technical perspective as an Arduino board will struggle to power a servo recoil due to the way that the current goes through the board. The solution is either a capacitor or a separate 6v battery to power the servo. I am just wondering whether the TCB, being a custom pcb, has solved this by having an inbuilt servo power supply, eg if it works ok, then it has.

Wibbly, the TCB provides the servo outputs with 5 volts from an onboard LDO that can source up to 3 amps. That should be more than enough for even a beefy servo. There is a video on the YouTube page that shows the recoil servo in action, being driven by the TCB, it is a large 6.4 kg-cm torque servo, much larger than you could fit into a 1/16th tank. Of course in the video the servo is operating under no load but I think there should be no problem.

It has been tested in the special servo-recoil airsoft Tiger 1 that Taigen sells, without issue.

Even so I'd be more than happy to hear about real world experience from other users!