RC Tanks Australia Forum

Hello everyone, I recently received my rc5hl and i am very satisfied, I can not say the same for elevation and rotation of my heng Long because are inaccurate, unrealistic and slow. Is there a way to use standard servos on five channels of rc5hl? I tried but the green LED does not light up, same with y link ...
thank you for the help

Hey Crazyk

First up, I'd give servos a miss unless:
1. You have a decent amount of RC experience and know how servos work
2. You have a decent amount of RC experience and know how to use your radio
or
3. There is physically no room inside your tank for the existing motor setups

Hence my first suggestion would be to use a GEKO with Battery voltage and the existing motor setups.



If you must have to use servos then you need to watch this video first:



Very important to remember about servos is that they go to the position that the radio tells them to go to. So if you put a servo on a stick channel it will move up and down nicely BUT if that stick is self centering (needed for just about all tank control systems) the servo will not STAY in position but move back to center as the stick moves back to center. To counter this you need a special unit like our Sirvoe control board.

Further, if you plan to use servos on the elevation channel 3 then you must also bear in mind that ch3 ALSO shares the control of the main gun and machine gun. Consequently, you will need a device that "filters out" the gun control information otherwise the servo will move to it's maximum limits when you try to fire the guns. Our Sirvoe board does this. However, most people will try to put the elevation servo on a separate/spare channel - doing this will mean that there will be no gun elevation sound as CH3 is not getting the required info.

Finally you should also have a plan to deal with the mechanical issues of servo use. That is to match the limits of servo travel with the limits of you elevation or turret travel.

Good Luck
Kevin G

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Hi Kevin,
I apologize because re-reading my first post I have noticed that I missed to add some basic info :
- I usually play with gliders, offroad 1:10 scalers, elys and some other rc-ized "stuff".
- I use a Turnigy 9X with er9x onboard and tank model setup extracted from tankER9X (it works great !!!) and your RC5HL

I'm used to custom all my models, I like to understand "how it's made and works"

The first thing I noticed opening my tank is that elevation and rotation systems are really low-level items: slow, inaccurate and not proportional so I decided for a servo solution.

For elevation servo, I tried to remove radio internal spring ad it's fine as I expected, also I trigger vertical stabilization with a ely gyro (wonderful effect). Maximum servo travel is locked with radio EPA. For turret rotation I modified a standard servo for continuos rotation, added a bevel gear and modded circular HL gears to fulfill its job.

Obviously I update my model setup according with this new configuration, so ch3 is used only for elevation and ch1 for rotation. Original switch are used for Main gun and machine gun.

My problem has an electronic/logical nature : I can't bypass RC5HL pluggin' servo directly to my receiver because RC5HL doesn't start if any 4 is missing and, again, I can't use Y link for same reason. Using my own servos for 1-5 channel and HL RX18 at the same time seems to be not possible at the moment

I read and saw your thread/video about GEKO and Sirvoe: I think I don't need Sirvoe 'cause I modify my radio but for GEKO solution I have to do some other test.... and hope in a your positive answer

PS: sorry for my english in advance

This sort of servo control problem has come up for flyers using FPV and wanting to control camera gimbals. It is quite easy, using er9x or openTx, to set up some mixes where a servo stays where it is while the stick is centered, and moves in the direction of the stick movement, faster the further the stick is moved, stopping when the stick returns to the centre.

If this is useful, I'll post the mix details.

Mike.

Thank's Mike but first of all i'd Like to Know How setup Electronic schema, links and items

@ Mike

Useful??? It's pretty darn close to the Holy Grail as far as I am concerned Your servo mix is what I/tankers have been wanting for ages. It is one of the things I was going to ask you about. It is required desperately for tanks. As you can see with the post above especially for gun elevation servo.

Please please post the mix details - an eepe file would be fine also.

@ Crazykite

OK obviously you are on the ball. Sounds like some excellent mods.

You can't use a "Y" cable per se as the Voltage Regulator output on the RC5HL does not have the amperage to drive all but the smallest of servos. You have to have a separate power supply for your servos (first video). This may be why your 'Y' cable is not working. As you can see the RC5HL has 'Y' signal outputs for all 5 channels A1, A2, A3, A4, A5. You can see these outs operating as they should in the GEKO video whereby the GEKO is being powered directly from the battery NOT the RC5HL.

I would suggest connecting the signal wire ONLY of your elevation servo to A3 on the RC5HL. Then find a separate 5V BEC to provide power to the servo. Likewise for the turret servo - connect the signal wire to A4 and power from the separate BEC.

Then await the post of the mix that Mike Blandford has promised. Removing the spring works of course for elevation servo movement but since the channel will not be outputting a neutral signal the sound of the elevation motor should be on continuously.

As a side note. With your modded Turret servo - have you thought about removing/disconnecting the pot and replacing with two 2.5K resistors?

Cheers and good luck
Kevin G

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rctanksaustralia.com

Let me get the kids off to school and I'll make up a diagram/schematic for the above suggestion/s

Cheers
KG

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rctanksaustralia.com

This is an example I posted elsewhere for panning control of a FPV camera gimbal:

"Try the following mixes on your camera channel (CH16 in this example)
+100% CH16
+2% RUD Switch SW1
R +100% FULL Switch SW2
R -100% FULL Switch SW3

SW1: |v|>ofs RUD 1
SW2: v>ofs CH16 100
SW3 v<ofs CH16 -100

First mix holds the channel
2nd mix adds a bit of the rudder stick in, more stick quicker moving.
3rd and 4th mixes stop the channel value going past 100%, otherwise it would and then would not move back immediately. (Limits stop the servo output, not the channel value)

SW1: detects when RUDder stick not centre
SW2 and SW3 detect the camera channel reaching full movement.

Play with the 2% in the second mix for different speed of movement. If it is too much, you will need to use another channel, e.g.
CH15: +20% RUD
then use CH15 instead of RUD in the 2nd mix. 2% of 20% is 0.4%."

This should work on both er9x/ersky9x and openTx, you may just need to adjust the response speed as described.
Note carefully the "R" on the last 2 mixes, these are "Replace" multiplex mixes.

Mike.

Mike, I tried... you are great !!!
Thank you

This morning I will buy a new BEC (3A or 5A) to test new configuration, using A* RC5HL output
Stay tuned !

Hey Mike

Thanks so much for this info. It is gold. Please shout yourself a few beers from us R/C tankers.

If anyone else would like to shout Mike a beer for all of his years of work you can do so at the link below.



I would NEVER have worked it out. My next problem will be setting this mix up as part of a template.

@ crazykite - I did have to use a second channel as suggested. I'm running at about 60% of the elevation channel.

Thanks a million for this
Kevin G

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