Nitewyn wrote:Hello all,
I'm working on some upgrades for my little HL Sherman. I'd like to add barrel smoke, flash and recoil to it, and I am not concerned about keeping the airsoft firing ability.
So far I've been doing a ton of searching, both here on the forums and on the internet in general to see if I can figure out how to achieve this, but I don't have the knowledge base yet to decipher what other people are doing.
A lot of posts or articles use generic terms, or acronyms that I don't know yet, such as "I used the upgraded recoil unit", "I installed one of John's boards to control it" or "Using the Id48.0 with the LK197 adapter".
Welcome, the problem is there is no simple solution! I started as new to tanks looking at this a few months ago.
The Heng Long has backwards recoil on the BB unit, the motor winds the spring pulling he barrel back and the spring releases to fire the BB, so it recoils slowly then returns fast on release. On a real gun of course, the shell firing causes very fast recoil and slow return to position.
The best way to replicate recoil is to use a servo, it can recoil fast and return slow like the real thing. Problem then is the 7.0 has no servo outputs - so you would need either a 6.1 or a 7.1, 7.1 is for sale from China now but I have not seen many people using them.
In terms of physical recoil mechanism, you can adapt the BB to attach a servo, but it’s a lot hacking about. In the other thread there is a HL unit at forgebear that could be used, but you still need a way to operate the servo. There are also various 3D printed options around for the recoil.
Muzzle flash can be added, but the wire and flash tube or SMD would stop the BB so you have to give that up.
The smoker is slightly different to the exhaust one, the standard exhaust has outputs all on top, and input from fan blower. The canon smokers are designed to be turret mounted under a hatch, so they have in and out either side, and only the filler on top. Forgebear and Aliexpress have these, and you can buy kits with a small PCB as well.
The PCB is designed to take the input from a micro switch on the BB, and fire the smoke when the cannon is at full recoil and the micro switch closes. This can be done with either the BB or the recoil unit as both have the switch, on the BB some instructions add another switch next to the existing one. The flash unit attaches to this small PCB as well to trigger it all together. It’s not well documented but you can see it in the instructions in the other thread.
The other way to trigger smoke on fire is to use the LED flash signal as a trigger, I believe all the electronics switch ground so it works like the micro switch. See videos in the linked thread.
So what’s the answer? Well you can add smoke, flash and recoil with the fire smoker from forgebear and the recoil unit, but you still have no way to operate the servo.
The only plug and play are the mako board or the ankh arduino one, the mako may be hard to get depending on where you live, and the ankh solution is neat but you need to have some basic knowledge to get it going.
This is why all the answers seem really complicated - there is no simple solution!
Most paths will lead you to needing a new TCB (Tank Control Board), that has servo outputs, but it’s either 7.1 which may work with your 7.0 transmitter not sure, 6.1 but then you need the new transmitter, or an aftermarket one then things are getting a lot more complicated and expensive!
support YOUR TOTM competition, I'm doing my part, are YOU?