RC Tank Warfare community hobby forum

nice work Wibbly.

as a thought would a motion sensor, like you get on external lights work as a trigger? obviously part of the sensor would need to be covered unless you are going to go the whole hog and have the AT gun in the bunker turning in the direction the sensor was broken and firing an IR beam.

very nice work there.
cheers
Steen

I did figure out the way to do the minefield.

Just need an led emitter in a 10mm tube on the side of a minefield. Connect the led to a 5v power source via a random timer. If a tank passes in front of the led it will be pure luck whether it gets hit, exactly like a minefield. There is a component called a 7555 that I think will do the job, but I have no idea how to put it into a circuit.

Failing that a geared down motor connected to a sliding contact would power the led at specified intervals.

A minefield now there,s idea.......................
i will see if i can sort something out for swindon...............
all flash and smoke...........
Yep this is something  for my little gray cells.........
I shall put them into overdrive...............
Fleshy.............................

Hi Guys anyone tried using a universal remote to test battle units ,if you have one it would be pretty easy to wire this so it triggered when a tank runs over the contacts ,hide the remote in a building and the wires running to contacts run over and bang could have several sets of contacts but you would have to camo them .

You cant just use an I.R. emmiter it needs a curcuit to tell it the pulse for tamiya its a bit of a code this is why you cant battle heng long against tamiya (unless you use a BSU)  they are using different codes .

regards pete

I am going to test this, I have a 5v Tamiya compatible IR emitter, and I will try it direct off of a battery with no circuitry attached....and I do get concerned about Fleshy, every time fire is mentioned he is in there with explosions and smoke and stuff!!

...Damn, my 5-YEL-8000 bulb is a high intensity led for a muzzle flash, and the other bulb must be 3v cost it fried...oh..the resistor's I put in the packet were there for a reason!  >:(

This is the emitter that we need, 940nm's, one went straight into my Darkith unit no problems.

http://www.maplin.co.uk/module.aspx?moduleno=2253

The important thing is the 940nm's. You'll want a 940 nm IR LED with a pulse forward current of around 1A, sustained current of 50ma, and a dispersion half-angle of 15-20 degrees or less. Depending on the power handling of the LED, you may want to add a small resistor (3-5 ohms) and test the range. Too large a resistor will reduce power, too small a resistor may cause the LED to burn out (ahem...as I just discovered!).

I reckon Darkith will know the answer to this one, I will drop him an email and see if he is in a good mood.

and quick as a (muzzle) flash here is the response from David. Pete was almost right.

*******
Nope.  Won't work.
Two reasons.
1.  The IR has to be "modulated"at 38khz.  This is sort of like the frequency of a radio...the transmitter has to be set to a certain frequency.
2.  The modulated IR has to carry the special signal, which is a pattern where the modulated IR is on for a period, off, then on, then off. etc.  It's basically a digital code.  This is sort of like speaking into the mic of a radio transmitter....you need to speak the right code word.

Connecting an IR LED to a battery will just produce a constant IR source with no modulation or code.  The IR sensors themselves will ignore the source, since they only look for correctly modulated IR.  This is because regular lightbulbs and the sun are IR sources, so unmodulated IR is *everywhere*, sort of like static on a radio.

David
********

So, it looks like a complete battle system is needed for a minefield to work, unless someone knows how to build a modulated IR emitter?

and here is a synopsis from David regarding the RX18 and IR compatibility. It has crossed my mind that based on what I am reading here, an RX18 hooked up to a 940nm IR emitter may provide the correct IR pulse...if so, it would be a cheap solution to the problem. He also seems to be inferring that swapping out the IR sensors in the HL mushroom will make it Tamiya compatible, but that the pin outs need to be changed (not too difficult using fly leads).

All from http://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/m_7975664/tm.htm

********

More notes:

Heng Long has done a much better job of wiring. They actually use Red for positive and Black for negative, and other colors for switched power outputs and signals.
Wiring is neater, fewer wires just tacked on any old place.

And as Blitz already indicated, both DBCs (the DBC-HL and DBC-RC2HL) work fine with the next TK-RX18 board.

The Heng Long infrared LED works fine. It's quite powerful as far as I can tell (****ty weather, so only short range tests). I used a 22 ohm inline resistor, though further range testing would indicate if dropping to a 10ohm resistor is needed (though it may burn up there) or increasing resistance is needed (if it's too powerful). The angle is too wide though...it needs a focusing tube to limit the spread...both the Tamiya LED in it's tube and the stock DBC IR LED have a narrower beam. Remember: "friendly fire....isn't"

The cannon flash can be hooked directly to the DBC-RC2HL "flash" output with the stock 10 ohm inline resistor.

Now, the HBU...that's different. When hooked up to a DBC, it can battle just fine with my Tamiya Sherman. But, it cannot receive hits from my DBC-equipped PzIII except at *very* short range (1-3 ft). It appears that the HBU is only sensitive to a narrow band of IR, and the stock DBC IR LED only emits a narrow band of IR. I suspect the HBU sensor is looking for 880nm, and I know the DBC IR LED is emitting a narrow band at 940nm, with very little (< 5%) at 880nm.
Both the TBU and DBU are sensitive to a wide band of IR (so can be hit by both 880nm and 940nm LEDs), and the Tamiya IR LED appears to be wide band and cover 880nm and 940 nm, though it's possible that the ranges would be different. (e.g. the range to hit a 880nm HBU would be different to hit a 940nm TBU, even if the optics were in the same condition). Unfortunately, I don't know how I could verify this, but the theory fits the symptoms.

So, for now, I don't know if I can recommend the stock HBU as a DBC sensor. It will work if you *only* battle Tamiya tanks, but I don't even know if the range is similar. There are two options though:
1. Replace the sensor inside the HBU with a DBU sensor (note the pinout is different, don't plug it into a stock HL). This means your tank will be able to take hits from anyone.
2. Replace the IR LED in any DBC equipped tanks with a wide band LED. This means the tank will be able to hit stock HBUs...but stock HBUs will still only be hit by "wide band" DBC tanks.

I really hate compatibility issues. For now, I'd recommend sticking with the DBU, or grafting a DBU sensor into the HBU....that makes the HBU wide-band for sure.

I'll post some notes and pics on my website documenting attaching to the RX-18 shortly.

D.

no pictures???

The pictures were probably lost in the forum move many years ago, sorry about that.