Hello from the Motor City
Posted: Wed Oct 28, 2020 9:34 am
Greetings from Detroit, Michigan, USA. I just joined the forum and am glad to find others who apparently enjoy RC tank warfare as much as I do. A bit about myself: I am a retired electrical engineer who has worked in the automotive industry for many years. I have worked on the supply-side of the industry for around 20 years designing electronic products for use in production vehicles. I spent the last 20 years or so working for one of the big three US automobile manufacturers in an electronics division ultimately writing software for a major component in the vehicle. Electronic design is (was?) my vocation and remains my avocation. Like many in the forum, I suspect, I started building tank models at a young age. My favorites were the 1/35 armor offerings from Tamiya. RC tanks are the perfect marriage of two of the things I enjoy messing around with: Tank models and electronics. Retirement has not meant a life of ease as having a family and a highly demanding job for many years meant there was little time for repairs around the house much less having fun. Major home repairs now consume most of my time but I do have some time for fun as well.
All of the RC tanks I own are made by Tamiya. The 1/16th ones include a Tiger I (a runner), Sherman (half completed) and a Pershing (still new in box). I own the 1/35th Panther and Sherman as well. I enjoy making electronics for use on the battlefield. One of my projects includes a functional PanzerTurm with a scratchbuilt 1/16 Panther turret which would rotate and fire IR shells. I started my electronics designs with Microchip microcontrollers where all code was written personally. Since Arduino came along things have gotten allot easier as there are tons code avaialble which others have written. More recently I work with Seeeduino Xiao's, Adafruit QT and Teensy (weird name) products. The latter of these cost 20% what an Arduino costs with 8x the capability. It's a great time for electronics experimenting.
I continue to work on battlefield electronics. Especially in the days of COVID it is difficult to get together with others to do IR battle so the next best option is to plug away at (and dodge) targets on the battlefield. I'm currently working on a static target for the 1/35 scale Tamiya tanks and am looking for some insights as to the coding of the IR shells. This search brought me to the RC Tank Warfare forum here. I'm glad to have found your group!
All of the RC tanks I own are made by Tamiya. The 1/16th ones include a Tiger I (a runner), Sherman (half completed) and a Pershing (still new in box). I own the 1/35th Panther and Sherman as well. I enjoy making electronics for use on the battlefield. One of my projects includes a functional PanzerTurm with a scratchbuilt 1/16 Panther turret which would rotate and fire IR shells. I started my electronics designs with Microchip microcontrollers where all code was written personally. Since Arduino came along things have gotten allot easier as there are tons code avaialble which others have written. More recently I work with Seeeduino Xiao's, Adafruit QT and Teensy (weird name) products. The latter of these cost 20% what an Arduino costs with 8x the capability. It's a great time for electronics experimenting.
I continue to work on battlefield electronics. Especially in the days of COVID it is difficult to get together with others to do IR battle so the next best option is to plug away at (and dodge) targets on the battlefield. I'm currently working on a static target for the 1/35 scale Tamiya tanks and am looking for some insights as to the coding of the IR shells. This search brought me to the RC Tank Warfare forum here. I'm glad to have found your group!
the great thing about this site is it's diverse member base and the differing knowledge they have from modeling to electronics, there's always something new to learn, you'll fit right in here 
