Planet 5 tx/rx set signal issues?

[Ellis]

Hi, thought I'd make a new thread instead of hijacking Terry's.

We have the above radio set and we're having some problems. Towards the start of Tormenta 2's build the receiver aerial failed, and without knowing it was a potential issue, we snipped it a few mm and resoldered.

I don't remember if the issues start from then after or if they were happening before, but the symptoms are these:

Forwards and backwards on the robot seem to be as they should be, if you ram the throttle forward and back it does it as I'd expect. The same goes for twitching on the spot side to side, no problem. The issue comes when I go hard forwards/backwards and then snap left or right. There's a significant delay, sometimes of up to a second. It makes driving the thing super clunky.

You can hear me complaining about it here in the bot's first fight:

(please excuse complaints of interference, I knew on the day it wasn't really that, but it was marked enough for me to whine about it throughout! You can probably see that I seem to stop and start between actions, partly my mediocre driving but much of it is this delay)

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Point is, is this something other people have experienced? Is it likely due to the aerial, which we have now extended again to within a mm of factory length? If anything now that we have, it feels worse. I fear we have kiboshed it.

I had a theory that it was the Botbitz' braking function overriding my tx inputs. So the speedo momentarily ignores me and follows its programming to brake (after driving hard fwd), then picks up on what I tell it to do once it has stopped the motors. It feels like it could be this, as the pauses aren't as marked if there at all if I deliberately keep the motors turning throughout the motion.

Any ideas for addressing this are greatly appreciated. With the UK champs looming I would naturally like the machine to be tip-top!

Thanks.

[plargen]

either go to lipo battery or put in a rx battery had a same prob with night fury

[Ellis]

You think it could be the batteries dipping in voltage too much? LiPos have just arrived so we'll see if that's the culprit once we get them on the go, although I'm skeptical, we had batteries capable of putting out 60-70 amps continuously...

If that's the problem then it's an easy fix!

[plargen]

or your getting interferance from the motors and need to suppress them

[Merkabah_PT]

The Faraday Cage is a big problem in robots, if the aerial is in the middle of too much metal or if power wires are close it causes interference and blocks signals.

Try using a dedicated baterry like plargen said.

A little tutorial about the ceramic caps, needed to find it for Primogenito, so i will post it as it can be useful for others:
http://www.rccrawler.com/forum/elect...apacitors.html

[plargen]

You think it could be the batteries dipping in voltage too much? LiPos have just arrived so we'll see if that's the culprit once we get them on the go, although I'm skeptical, we had batteries capable of putting out 60-70 amps continuously...

If that's the problem then it's an easy fix!

the batterys were running it ok to start with but after they got cooked a couple of times when running the bot and those wheelchair motors for a bit and then it started and the bec kept cutting the power to the receiver if i was in full throttle in 1 direction and then suddenly changed
so far the lipo seems to have solved it and made it a bit faster and definitely more powerfull ( the blue spark at the back of the motor is much brighter)

[Ellis]

Peter, we just had our first test on LiPo, and it appears to have fixed the problem. Haven't been able to really test the machine in anger (indoors just isn't safe!) but I didn't once feel the delay in a few minutes of playtime.

So, many many thanks! It'll make a lot of difference in the arena, I'm sure.

Very short video is uploading which I'll stick in the build thread. :)