Dasmikro (TBS Benedini clone)

Talk about all other types of electronics here, such as batteries!
Post Reply
User avatar
Rad_Schuhart
Warrant Officer 1st Class
Posts: 1979
Joined: Tue Jan 19, 2016 9:22 am
Location: Spanish living in Graz, Austria. Heart in UK.
Contact:

Dasmikro (TBS Benedini clone)

Post by Rad_Schuhart »

EDIT: Hi everybody. This thread is quite old and obsolete, I wrote it when I began testing the boards. I published more detailed info and a tutorial on my website, and you can find it here:

Tutorial:
https://radindustries.wordpress.com/202 ... -tutorial/
Review Benedini Mini V2:
https://radindustries.wordpress.com/201 ... s-mini-v2/
Review Benedini Micro:
https://radindustries.wordpress.com/201 ... -dasmikro/
Review V3 and V4:
https://radindustries.wordpress.com/202 ... ini-v3-v4/

Hope it helps.


















Hi everyone, I decided to open this thread because I found this small (makes honor to his name) board is really impressive and it worths a try and I may help a lot to those guys struggling with the Heng Long trucks, the Open Panzer board and so on.

First of all, if you can afford it, you should buy the original from the Benedini site. http://www.benedini.de The price of the board would be 89 euros, + 22 of the programming cable, + shipping... Pricey? Yes. Way too pricey for me, impossible to justify, so I just bought the chinesse knockout that you can find everywhere from less than 20 euros free shipping and comes with pins and even a small speaker.

Second, I must say that I am very surprised about the lack of info in internet about it... Is not easy to find how to toy with it, and I even googled for it in three languages with poor results... I think the vast majority of people just sticks with the stock sounds and they dont use any of the extra features at all...

So for controlling the board you need:
1) A ESC (Electronic Speed Controller) with a BEC (Battery Elimination Circuit) This means the ESC powers the Dasmikro and the receiver) with a maximum output of 5v. Warning, you can use the battery that you want (of course according to your ESC limitations), but the ESC must supply a maximum of 5v to the dasmikro.
2) A programmable radio would be ideal with his receiver. Sorry, no crappy Tamiya attack radios here, lol. Also the Heng Long/Taigen ones wont work.

With this board you can do virtually everything you want... It has 5 motor sounds (Start, idle, rev up, moving, rev down and shutdown) and a maximum of 16 custom sounds where you can put whatever you want... But limited with a maximum of 512 kbs of memory. Yes, I know the memory is small, but it gives you something like 30 seconds, which is not bad at all.

Also the board works as a proportional smoke regulator, and even you can control all the lights you want. You can trigger the lights in the order you want, blinking, steady, flashing and even with sounds (For example an orange led flashing with a machine gun sound makes a working machine gun, lol) You even can adjust how fast you want them to flash... Is not the same a cal 50 machine gun than a MG42, right? Also it has brake lights, rear lights... Definitely you can have all the lights you can wish, and there is no need of any extra electronic switch.

For programing the board you need:
0) A word that I lean in this forum. RTFM!!! (Read the F. manual, lol. I uploaded it in the Download section in the forum)
1) A computer with I think, windows. It seems it works in all windows from windows XP. I tested it in W10. If somebody with another OS tries it, Ill update the thread.
2) Install the drivers (For some reason I CANNOT upload them in the forum) Mods help?
3) Install the Benedini program. (Uploaded in the forum)
4) And a programer board. This is a nice point. DO NOT BUY THE PROGRAMMER AT BANGGOOD. Dont buy it alone, and dont buy the board that comes with it. It comes bad wired and it wont work, and also is over expensive. Buy a cheap 3 programmer like this one:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/Basic-Breakout ... SwImRYUYAV
And wire it following the diagram, BUT the VCC wire is not needed at all: (Warning, your programmer might have a different order of wires, but just follow the names. I mean, connect for example the GD wire where you programmer says GD) lol
2,3.png
2,3.png (294.05 KiB) Viewed 20066 times
If you already have the bang me good programmer, just take a look to it and be sure all the wires are like the diagram.

About the sounds:
All the sounds in the board need to have the same format. I am using 22khz 8 bit .wav files, and I am having a total amount of something about 30 seconds played. For explaining how to make sounds I need to do another looong tutorial, but that's not the point now. The quality I am using is the best the board can play. With worse quality I guess you can use longer sounds, but I have not tested it yet.
The board has 1W output power. Well, the board comes with a small speaker which has a very low power and poor sound quality... I considered installing an amp of 3W but first I tried just replacing the speaker... And WHAT A DIFFERENCE, MAN! The board is LOUD. Really loud, in my opinion it does not need any AMP at all, if you replace the speaker with a better one, the board is definitely loud enough, at least for the Heng Long trucks, not sure about a full metal with steal gears Tiger... Just be sure to install at least a speaker with 8 Ohm or above. I had very bad results with the 4 Ohm one, and you even may damage the board, the speaker or both..
Another marvel of this small board is that you can adjust the volume from the radio too, and there is no need to use additional channels or to plug anything extra to the receiver. I am really surprised about it.

And when programming the sounds, you can also set the volume, or for example if when playing a custom sound you want the motor sound to stop... Its useful, really. I am using this in a hand made P40, I will do a video when I finish it, in a couple of years, maybe, lol.
Last edited by Rad_Schuhart on Sat May 20, 2023 6:48 pm, edited 15 times in total.
My RC tanks website, loads of free info for everybody:
https://radindustries.wordpress.com/
User avatar
Rad_Schuhart
Warrant Officer 1st Class
Posts: 1979
Joined: Tue Jan 19, 2016 9:22 am
Location: Spanish living in Graz, Austria. Heart in UK.
Contact:

Re: Dasmikro (TBS Benedini clone)

Post by Rad_Schuhart »

Some videos to have a better idea about the light features:

phpBB [video]


phpBB [video]


phpBB [video]


phpBB [video]
Last edited by Rad_Schuhart on Sat May 20, 2023 6:59 pm, edited 3 times in total.
My RC tanks website, loads of free info for everybody:
https://radindustries.wordpress.com/
User avatar
Rad_Schuhart
Warrant Officer 1st Class
Posts: 1979
Joined: Tue Jan 19, 2016 9:22 am
Location: Spanish living in Graz, Austria. Heart in UK.
Contact:

Re: Dasmikro (TBS Benedini clone)

Post by Rad_Schuhart »

Thats all today, I'll update the thread tomorrow with the drivers, apps and some software tutorials.
My RC tanks website, loads of free info for everybody:
https://radindustries.wordpress.com/
User avatar
midlife306
Warrant Officer 1st Class
Posts: 2238
Joined: Sun Aug 27, 2017 10:34 am

Re: Dasmikro (TBS Benedini clone)

Post by midlife306 »

Thank you VERY much Rad, I’ll be watching this thread closely!
Cheers
Wayne


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
User avatar
tomhugill
Captain
Posts: 4745
Joined: Thu Apr 15, 2010 11:21 am

Re: Dasmikro (TBS Benedini clone)

Post by tomhugill »

Great thread! Thanks for the heads up on the programmer too
User avatar
Max-U52
Lieutenant
Posts: 3879
Joined: Sat Sep 12, 2015 8:56 pm
Location: Detroit

Re: Dasmikro (TBS Benedini clone)

Post by Max-U52 »

I've been waiting for this thread and will be following closely. I'll take a good look at my programmer after work and see what I have. I got mine from ebay, not bangmegood so it may be different. I know for sure that right now it doesn't have a standard j connector so I at least have to do something with that, but now I at least know where the wires need to go.
When FDR coined the phrase "The Arsenal of Democracy", he was talking about Detroit. Proud to live in the 2nd most violent city in America!!
User avatar
Rad_Schuhart
Warrant Officer 1st Class
Posts: 1979
Joined: Tue Jan 19, 2016 9:22 am
Location: Spanish living in Graz, Austria. Heart in UK.
Contact:

Re: Dasmikro (TBS Benedini clone)

Post by Rad_Schuhart »

Ok, today I have some more minutes to continue writing about the board.

Max, I dont know what kind of programmer you have, but a standar J connector wont fit. The J connector and the normal pins are double the size you need. What I did in my small board is to solder some 1,27mm female connectors like these ones:

https://www.ebay.com/itm/10pcs-50-Pin-5 ... SwBahVC4Rz

I decided to solder the female ones in the board, because they are really small and the male ones are more fragile than the female ones.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/5pcs-50P-50-Pi ... SwMmBV0TOU

This makes everything a lot easier, specialy when testing the light options. Its always easier to plug and unplug things than soldering, specialy in such a small connectors.

I was also going to write a long tutorial about how to wire and set up everything, but then I found some videotutorials on internet. Those tutorials are with the Benedini MINI, but with the micro is the same in about a 90%.


Adding custom sounds tutorial:
phpBB [video]


Parameters tutorial: This is the most important, most of the info you need is here!
phpBB [video]
Last edited by Rad_Schuhart on Mon Nov 20, 2017 5:57 pm, edited 3 times in total.
My RC tanks website, loads of free info for everybody:
https://radindustries.wordpress.com/
User avatar
Rad_Schuhart
Warrant Officer 1st Class
Posts: 1979
Joined: Tue Jan 19, 2016 9:22 am
Location: Spanish living in Graz, Austria. Heart in UK.
Contact:

Re: Dasmikro (TBS Benedini clone)

Post by Rad_Schuhart »

Board.png
Well, this is the board we are working on. For wiring the lights, you need to put one of the led legs (I think the positive, but reversing polarity seems to not to be a problem, the led wont light but wont burn or explode) to A1, A2, A3, A4, A5, A6, A/, A8, or A9 and the other where it says ground. I think the output power is 5v, so you might need some resistors.

So when you are programming the board with the software, you can select which output you want to use, and what do you want it to do. You can program all the outputs to do whatever you want. Flashing, blinking, steady... So it has a lot of flexibility.

No idea what are PWM1 and PWM2 are used for, lol.


And the last (and hardest) part of the board is how to trigger the light and sounds themselves... I must confess I'm still a bit green on it, but I am on the right way. For being able to select whatever you want, it will help to have a 12 position encoder or rotary switch in your radio... I replaced one of the potentiometers in my radio with a 6 position switch, and using the amazing powerful ersky9x software, and combining that 6 pos switch with another switch, it would be like having a 12 position switch in my radio. Cool, isn't it?

Anyway, due to the sound length is quite small, this is not really needed... You can program the radio to trigger one sound with the PROP 3, AND, this is the best part, another two sounds with the PROP 2, sending a +100 and a -100 of signal, just connecting wires from the Dasmikro to the receiver. As easy as that. But yes, definitely id say you need a programmable radio, or at least one with screen so you can see what the hell you are doing.

The best part of the PROP2 stuff, is that you can trigger up to 2 sounds without needing to select them first, making this small board suitable for the Open Panzer Board, due to now you can quickly shoot your cannon and your machine gun, and we also we have at least another extra sound in the prop 3 when using another 3 pos switch, or 12 if using a 12 position switch.

But even when I love having a lot of sounds (you all know I love my 220 sounds in my Sherman, lol) again due to the memory limit, I'd say is more than enough with something about three custom extra sounds (not including motors, of course).
Last edited by Rad_Schuhart on Tue Jun 05, 2018 9:48 am, edited 2 times in total.
My RC tanks website, loads of free info for everybody:
https://radindustries.wordpress.com/
User avatar
wibblywobbly
Major
Posts: 6398
Joined: Fri Oct 17, 2008 9:30 am
Location: South Wales Valley
Contact:

Re: Dasmikro (TBS Benedini clone)

Post by wibblywobbly »

For wiring the lights, you need to put one of the led legs (I think the positive, but reversing polarity seems to not to be a problem, the led wont light but wont burn or explode)
One trick to get reversing lights even if you don't have a board is to wire them to the motor terminals so that they light up when the motors are reversed. You need a resistor as the led's are likely to be 5v max, motors are more than that. An led only lights up when the current is running one way, so when the motors are going forwards they are turned off.

Might help someone. :wave:
Tiger 1 Late
Panther G
King Tiger
M36 B1
User avatar
Max-U52
Lieutenant
Posts: 3879
Joined: Sat Sep 12, 2015 8:56 pm
Location: Detroit

Re: Dasmikro (TBS Benedini clone)

Post by Max-U52 »

OK, I think I'm ready to try and learn a thing or three here, with a little help from my friends. 8)

Here's the first mikro I bought, and the programming cable. It's a bit different from yours, Rad, but I think you'll understand it and be able to help me figger it out. Check out these two quick videos and they'll show you where I'm at

phpBB [video]


phpBB [video]


I guess I need to solder the connector to the mikro but those are some tiny little holes and they're really close together. Know any good video tutorials for soldering tiny little boards like this?
When FDR coined the phrase "The Arsenal of Democracy", he was talking about Detroit. Proud to live in the 2nd most violent city in America!!
Post Reply

Return to “Other electronics”