RC Tank Warfare community hobby forum

So I’m back.

I just put the tank back together after having it apart for a while, and upon first power on the TCB froze up. Before it had only done this when I turned the model off and then back on again within the span of a few seconds. Now, even though the model was disconnected, it is doing this when it was first powered on.

The lights (headlights, machine gun lights, break lights) come on and stay on, (as opposed to blinking rapidly) and the red LED on the TCB stays solid red. If I press the reset button then the TCB will boot up properly. The issue is (1) I can’t reach the reset button when the model is fully assembled and (2) the ESC that controls turret rotation and elevation has its own boot up process, and if the TCB doesn’t boot up properly, then it won’t boot up properly, and even if I reset the TCB, I will also have to reset the initialization process for that ESC.

The only thing I changed from before was that I added a audio isolator to the 12v line that sits between the DasMikro and the speaker amp.

Any suggestions? I might try to do a factory reset on it tomorrow, I have all of my setting saved, so I can just reload them afterwards.

Well we're still not entirely certain what the cause of this behavior is, which makes it difficult to know where to look for the solution. I suppose the best theory at present is that power is not consistent somehow on boot, possibly your battery is faltering momentarily when all the devices are turned on, and this is confusing the TCB.

One thing you could try that at any rate would at least confirm or deny this hypothesis, is to use a separate battery for the TCB, like a dedicated 2S lipo. This would require you to install a second on/off switch which means you'd have to flip two switches to turn on the model, so that's kind of a pain, but if it eliminated the TCB hangups, that would at least be useful information.

This second battery will need to share a ground with the main vehicle battery (this connection should come before the on/off switches, ie, between the batteries themselves). But you'll need to be careful there is no positive connection between them, otherwise your 40v battery (or 24v converter, or whatever), will try to charge you small lipo, with bad results.

This lipo would power the TCB, and as I understand it, the TCB is also providing 5 volts to your receiver and the DasMikro. That will be fine, those are low current devices. As for the connection between the TCB and your speed controllers, those are only ground and signal, so no current required there, which is good. Lights are negligible. But are you driving any heavy duty servos or other high current devices directly from the TCB? If so that could also be a part of your problem, if they are pulling more than the onboard 5v regulator of the TCB can provide.

So, uh, it just decided to work again today. Maybe the threat of me getting out my computer to wipe the TCB got it to work?

Start up is a little bit different now though, instead of immediately blinking and stopping, now the lights turn on and hang for a second or two, then rapidly blink and everything is initialized properly.

I’ll take what I can get here though. If I have significant problems again I will give the second battery a shot though.

There shouldn’t be any heavy lifting by the TCB. Traverse and elevation are controlled by an ESC with no positive connection. The TCB doesn’t provide power directly to the recoil servo, it does provide power to the drive ESC, but it’s just 5v. Then you’ve got all the connections to the DasMikro. The headlights are stepped up to 12v, but the rest of the lights are 5v. You’ve got the two I/O ports that are just 5v. The smoker powers a 12v air pump, but that is off on start up. Nothing in flash or the built in ESCs. Airsoft powers the 12v automotive relay, but not on start up.