RC Tank Warfare community hobby forum

Yep, a dremel and milliput are required for this type of work

I fix the Mantelet to hold the LED to 9mm from the opening. I soldered up my IR emitter LED and plugged it into the Clark TK 40 board into the micro 1.25 jst (j1) plug for the emitter. No Joy. It doesn't seem to work. I checked the polarity twice. Do I need to program the MFU in order for the emitter to start to function? I would figure it would work right out of the box. On another note I am still waiting for my parts to arrive to connect my TBU receiver to the (cn2) to the top of the tank. Just wonder if the whole unit needs to be in place in order to work?

I didn't have to program my TK40 for the IR emitter to pulse. I tested the polarity of mine with a normal junk LED I had laying around first just incase I got it wrong.

good Idea. I'll try that

Hi
Try to connect a multimeter (voltmeter) to the IR emitter wires. You should have a voltage spike at the moment while you shoot. Additionally, you will check the polarity this way (where is actually PLUS + and where MINUS -). Then switch the Multimeter to Diode Test (red diode symbol) and connect your IR diode ( only diode - Clark IR wires must be disconnected ) directly to the wires. You should hear a beep sound and value lower than 1 on the LCD. This means that the diode is operational. If you connect the plus of the multimeter to the minus of the diode, or if the diode is dead - you will not hear anything and the LCD will show 1.

quitcherbitchen wrote:Just wonder if the whole unit needs to be in place in order to work?

Good question, certainly this is the case with other systems but I don't use Clark so I can't confirm. Unless somebody here knows for sure, I'd suggest waiting until you can hook the sensor up before hitting the panic button and trying random stuff.

I don't think that's necessary. I must admit that I only have experience with HL where I built the entire IR system myself - which was actually trivial. But a receiver should not be needed for the operation of the IR LED, and vice versa - for the receiver to work, the IR transmitter should not be needed. But you won't find out if you don't check it. Use my advice on testing with a multimeter. This will greatly speed up your diagnosis of where the problem is.

At least some of the Tamiya clone systems I am familiar with have a lock out feature to prevent folks cheating by having a disconnected sensor - no sensor present, IR won't trigger. The DBC is the one that springs to mind immediately, in the interest of science I'll check my various El-Mod and Tamiya systems, but somebody with a Clark board needs to test this and confirm.

Thank you for everyone's input. They all make sense. My multimeter is "currently "(funny) out of commission. I broke one of the probe wires off trying to pull it from too far away. It also had a dead battery(fixed that) I will keep everyone posted to my progress. I also can't figure out the pin configuration of the CN2 on the MFU. I am going bite the bullet and buy the Clark programming cable and remote. It might help things down the line. Again what a great forum for getting answers.
QB

Happy to report it works. Polarity issue. Thank you everyone.