Cicatrix Build Diary

Thats the same conclusion I came to, perhaps I should have tried that test sooner than now.

I'd have to ask David Weston about that Jamie, I cant even tell by looking at it as I have never another XXL so nothing to compare it to. Hopefully he'll read this and reply but if not i'll send him a PM about it. Its also had the terminals torn from the board so its not exactly a showroom model even if it is a real XXL :lol: .

If any events do spring up in the near future, however doubtful that may be, at least the performance will be slightly improved from how it was at RL Edinburgh, mainly because the XL is doing all the work though. Hopefully David/RL will be able to help though :)

Have you checked the calibration on the XXL?

I forgot to do that, so I just tried it and the XXL is now not playing at all. Will try to work out why that might be tomorrow but i'm getting a bit too annoyed with it today so i'm going to give in.

No joy today either, the XXL is just clicking and not responding at all to any input at all. Just seems to make the motors click over and over again while the XL works perfectly. Not sure how to fix it?

What BEC are you using? The ones built into the esc? ... Might be worth disconnecting your XL (front half of the robot) and seeing if just the rear XXL will drive independent of the front... If it does I'd suggest cutting both BEC links and trying the setup with a fully charged RX pack.... Failing that contact rick maas... He's our local robotpower repair guy, he's re-built and customised the sidewinder in 540 for me and repaired the XXL in 360 for me before at a really good price.

I'm using an external Turnigy BEC and both BEC wires have been cut on the ESC's. I'll try disconnecting the XL and see if the XXL can drive the rear motors without anything else being connected and see what happens there.

Right, I think its definitely busted, took a video of what its doing.

http://i1214.photobucket.com/albums/...9-15-20-38.jpg

I did as Dave suggested, disconnected all of the XL/front half of the robot and that is the outcome, it just seems to be clicking repeatedly. It does this all the time, with or without the calibration jumper on. Isn't responding to any signals, that is all it does.

From the instruction manual:
Slow blink - searching for required radio channels especially at startup

I take it your radio etc is working fine? Tried it with a different radio system or an rx battery instead of a BEC? All the receiver leads on the Scorpion still properly connected? (just to definitely rule out everything else)

It might be something to do with my dodgey soldering, but I can't see any problems other than that. The clicking is it moving the motors very slightly although you can't really see that in the video.

I don't have an rx battery, but I did try it using the XL's BEC and got the same result. As for the radio, I was using it on Daiske yesterday and it was working fine and also works fine on the XL when they are both wired up. As for the receiver wires I haven't checked them but I will give them a look over.

I can't think what the problem is. You had it running at the air museum didn't you ?

I would suggest getting Rick Maas to look it over.

Yeah, it was running to a certain extent, I didn't really have any control because the current limiter was cutting in whenever I moved the stick. It wasn't quite as visible on the bench but as soon as the wheels had weight on them it was really bad. I had just assumed that the drills were using too much current and that was what was causing it but now that the XL seems fine with 2 drills and the XXL really struggle I am thinking it might be otherwise.

I'm thinking sending it away for a once over would be the best option.

How would I get in contact with him? Just through the forum or is there some other way?

Hi there,

David Moulds pointed this topic to me, you can contact me at rick at team-rcc . org
If you could send me an email which problem you have and the things you already tried then I€™ll have a look tomorrow.

Cheers Rick (and David), I will write down a list and get it emailed off to you.

Well, XXL is on route back home from the Netherlands with a new control chip and some reprogramming, hopefully that will fix it.

I'll get it all installed and test it on whichever pod it came out of (can't remember now, its been a while since I looked :uhoh: ) then if all is well I might try it on all 4 motors. Hopefully that will solve all the control problems we've had over the past few events.

Next on the agenda will possibly be either Eric or Daiske II, depending on when Mr McHarg is free, as my team mate will be returning from Japan in the next few weeks then the 4 of us can get the old boy going again. As for the hydraulics, prepare to be bombarded with questions....

My mate's birthday gig is this weekend and then next weekend will probably be spent sorting out my shed so say about two weeks?
Will be good to get back into a bit of bot work at least - it's been very quiet build-wise at RogueTwo Towers lately. The break's been nice but my fingers are getting itchy :)

you should see your doctor about that jamie :P

Sounds good man, i'll run it by him when he gets home. He's hard enough to get hold of in this country nevermind in Japan... I think we may have a show booked on the saturday evening of that weekend but that will be at night, obviously, so if its a 1 day effort we're going to aim for then that would be fine, you'd be welcome to crash here of course, but if we're working an 80th birthday party the eye candy might be a bit boring for you :lol:

Been pretty quite for me too, frustrating that a lot of things need done but for Cicatrix its just a case of waiting for the ESC to come back, Eric Jr needs gas, Daiske II i'm leaving to Colin/Jamie S and the heavies i'm waiting for all four of us to get together and get going on them. The one thing I have done though is put Eric in a place in the garage where people cant see him until they're walking away from the front door and he looks like some sort of Hippy Guard Dog, the look on their faces makes this game all worth while :lol:

Also forgot to add, I ordered a FrSky 40MHz - 2.4GHz conversion kit and receiver yesterday evening so i'll get that done in time for Eric's rewiring.

Well if I come up that weekend and stay over, I'm more than happy to help out with your event. Not too fussed about a lack of eye candy, just glad I'm not that old yet :)
Nice one with the conversion kit, I think links to the wiring pictures/threads are kicking about on the forum somewhere but if you can't find them/need them, just shout and I'll post them. It's pretty straightforward though, so much so that even the appalling translation of instructions from Chinese to English can't throw you too much!

Nice one man :) . I'll find out what/where it is and see what would be best, it'll just show you exactly how little I do to get paid :lol: . Colin and I have had some bad experiences with the eye candy at some of these events, it was quite funny really though. Shall we say it involved a ladies 50th birthday speech, her MOTHERS white dress and our UV lights :shock: :lol: .

Cheers for that, I think there is a link to them on the Giant Cod site but if not i'll have a dig around the forum for them and if worst comes to worst i'll get you to send me them. I'll look for them in Japanese and see if Colins year in Tokyo has taught him anything :lol:

Right, got the FrSky gear delivered today but when I took the radio to bits I think I maybe have discovered a problem.

Read some reviews etc on it and how to guides and just couldn't find the board they were talking about. So, looked up a video and Jamie's guide on here and saw the that board appears to be attached to the trainer port. Here lies the problem...

http://i1214.photobucket.com/albums/...8-26181018.jpg
http://i1214.photobucket.com/albums/...8-26181032.jpg
http://i1214.photobucket.com/albums/...8-26181043.jpg

Looks almost like the board has been changed in favour of some other sort of trainer connector? Whatever it is, I have been thoroughly confused by it, hopefully someone can enlighten me.

Just a very quick reply as I'm heading out shortly.
That's a bit different from what I expected, which is then confusing relating to the instructions. But the conversion should still be possible. The connections you solder on to on the trainer port circuit board should be able to be traced back to a point on the main circuit board inside the controller, so if you can find them, you should just be able to solder direct to them. The only difference is that you are interrupting the wires at a different point than you would be if you soldered to the trainer board, but that won't have any effect on the functionality of the conversion kit.

It's a Field Force 6 yeah? I'll try and get a picture of the connection points to the main board in my transmitter later on and post it up.

Yeah it is a Field Force 6 Jamie, it did make the instructions rather confusing. That would be great, cheers :) .

Looks like they've rewired the trainer connector to be used for a external weapon switch (so somebody else fires the weapons). Conversion is still possible just harder to find the connection points.

No problemo; been busy the past couple of weekends living life like a student again, but got a day off tomorrow (woohoo) so will get that sorted :)

No hurry really, have plenty of other radio sets to do testing with :).

I've got the photos, but I need to do a little editing to them just to make it clear what bits are what. But I'm loaded with a cold/virus at the moment (my body's way of telling me that I can no longer go out on consecutive weekends, drink lots, go to bed late, and expect to get away with it!) so some point before the weekend, hopefully tomorrow, I'll get them up.

If it's any consolation, it should hopefully still be a doddle :)

Okay, photo time!

Firstly, if you still had the trainer port board, the connection going in would look like this:

[attachment=2:3i026rkb]DSCN6229.JPG[/attachment:3i026rkb]

Connections are:

• +ve = red
  -ve = brown
  PPM = yellow

Can't exactly remember what orange is but it isn't needed for the conversion.

I'm not sure what's gone on inside your transmitter when the trainer port's been modded, but these wires then go to the circuit board running vertically between the two sticks of the transmitter:

[attachment=1:3i026rkb]DSCN6231.JPG[/attachment:3i026rkb]

And a close-up:

[attachment=0:3i026rkb]DSCN6230.JPG[/attachment:3i026rkb]

I couldn't get in behind the board to double-check, but the red and yellow wire positions are clear enough, and I'm pretty sure the brown wire connects to the bottom-most solder pad in that picture. If the wires have just been cut as part of the trainer modification and there is enough length left on them, then it should just be easy enough to solder your wires to it. If they've been un-soldered from the circuit board then it'll be a bit more fiddly to try and get them attached.

If your transmitter doesn't have any of those connections, then I'm not too sure where the next connections points would be. Technically, positive and negative can probably be taken off any part of the transmitter power lines, such as where the battery connections are soldered on, but the PPM line is the important one so it's knowing where that goes after it connects to the circuit board.

Ahh ok, I still have those wires attached to the transmitter and know where you mean. Looks like it might be easier if I hacked off the connection to those 4 wires that used to lead to the trainer port and solder them to the wires coming from the FrSky, rather than going directly onto the board? If that should work then i'll give it a try tomorrow.

Cheers for that Jamie :D

I didn't word part of my post very well but yeah that's what I mean; if the wires are still there, then just solder direct to them. Saves you having to mess about with intricate soldering at the circuit board end :)

http://i1214.photobucket.com/albums/...1-16-11-16.jpg

Drumroll destroying an old pc monitor. We were working on Eric too though, honest...

Not that you can tell much, but there was a little breeze blowing at the time :crazy:
Need to get the drive sorted though, even if it was a slippery surface (and on a slope)

Hence the kicking?

The teeth look like they bite nicely though.

Yup, much kicking required to get it to move. Having said that, the wheels need replacing, they're pretty goosed.
The teeth bite nicely, but the drum's still a bit too slow for my liking. And far too unbalanced.
Gonna bite the bullet and invest in a decent brushless setup for it though; can't have it under-performing at the next champs - it's got a reputation to uphold! :lol:

The steepness of the hill actually doesn't come across too well, but for people watching, I have tried running Eric Jr on that carpark and it has no chance, just gets stuck constantly, it was also the only 5 minutes of the day where it wasn't raining heavily. We had also been testing on a garage floor coated with hydraulic oil :lol: .

Don't worry Jamie, the next UK champs will still have to walls for you to smash it into until its broken, your rep will be fine :proud:

:?

For an unknown reason I can't view the video. Any chance it could be uploaded to YouTube? :uhoh:

Not working for me atm either, will probably start working soon.

Working now, and my God, when you said breeze you weren't freakin' kidding! Surprised Drumroll didn't float away...

Looking very cool, loving the bright colours and of course, the destruction. :twisted:

Not another brushless spinner! What sort of RPM are you getting on the drum at the moment?

Not enough RPM! For some reason, running a Speed 900 in Drumroll II hasn't impressed me as much as the original one. I think a large part of that is due to the drum being significantly lighter than the old one, as nothing else has changed. It uses the same batteries and same gearing as previously but just doesn't seem as impressive. In order to keep up the destruction with less weight, the RPM needs to increase and the best way to do that is to go brushless, so I'll be looking into that soon.

Sorry Tony, I seem to have hi-jacked your thread with my updates :P

haha, just a tad!

So where has the extra weight gone then? Surely you want as much weight in the drum as possible? Slightly concerned as the whole rotating structure of Bitza 2 is likely to only weigh 2kg.