How to wire up a gyro

[ewan]

I wondered where in the circuit a gyro would need to be placed. I guess it must be in line with the steering channel, but must it be before or after the mixer? If it had to be after, it would make things more difficult, as the mixer is built into the H5s...
Cheers, Ewan
http://www.micro-maul.co.ukwww.micro-maul.co.uk

[kinforester]

Ewan just put in the steering channel form the Rx to H5 and see if that works, i can see it working any other way.

GORD

[madoverlord]

Wire it between radio and mixer on the steering channel. You must mix in the robot.

Make sure that you get a gyro with both heading lock and a separate gain channel. You need to disable the gyro if you go inverted otherwise youll get gyro death spin.

Some people only enable the gyro when the bot is being commanded to move forward or backward, doing this with a transmitter mix (elevator controlling the gain channel).

I recently got a futaba gyro that seems to work very well and is very small:

http://www2.towerhobbies.com/cgi-bin/WTI0001P?&I=LXXF87http://www2.towerhobbies.com/cgi-bin/WTI0001P?&I=LXXF87

Enjoy, they are a lot of fun.

[wenman]

Gyros are great as long as you make sure they are working in the correct direction before you use them.

I used an ICG gyro in my heavy and it eliminated all the steering problems. Unfortunately it has a tendancy to reprogram itself if it picked up to much noise and could send it into a crazy spin. But I did manage to get it to work upside down since my mixer has an on board reverse switch that reverses the drive and steering when flipped over.

Richard
Team Mayhem

[kinforester]

If Ewan is using H5 controllers there is no seperate mixer ,the two controllers are conected together and sort the mixing between them, one controller is conected to the Rx throtle output and the other controller to the Rx steering output ,conect the gyro in the later.

GORD

[armadrillo]

What advantages do you get by fitting a gyro?
Built 2 heavies in the past with a now defuncked team and didnt even consider it.

Building a my first feather and was considering fitting one.
Hoping to have it near finished for Folkstone to gage some feed back.

[wenman]

To a large extenet it depends on the robot design:
4 wheel drive its next to pointless
2 wheel drive with wheels abount central possibly improve its ability to go in a nice straight line.
2 wheel drive with wheels at one end well I couldnt drive mine in anything remotely close to a straight line without a gyro.

It also depends on the control system and mechanics of your drive.

Best idea is probably build it and see if you need a gyro. Ie if your having trouble controlling it. If you dont need it to improve the control then its just more money and another thing to go wrong.

Richard Wenman
Team Mayhem

[armadrillo]

Cheers richard
My heavy had 2 wheel drive to the rear. It was ok going forward but a right pain in reverse.

The feather will be 2 wheel drive with the wheels about 2/3 back.
Just have to wait and see how it drives without.

Glen Doherty
Now of Team Major Tom

[andrew_gardner]

Whether you need a gyro also depends on top speed and how far apart your wheels are, the further apart the less likely you are going to need a gyro. My heavy, Blitz, had a top speed of 11.1mph, and 2 wheel drive with the wheels approximately in the middle and approx 61cm from the middle of one tread to the other. I seem to remember that the robot was fairly easy to drive on the smooth Robot Rumble Arena, but more of a handful on the more battle-worn Roaming Robots Arena. Basically, I think that if your robots got 2 wheel drive and a top speed of 12mph or more, a gyro is a very useful thing to have.

[armadrillo]

My robot will have a top speed of 10.5mph and the wheels will be approx 40cm apart from the middle of the treads. I should have all the bits together next week so i can finally start building the chassis. I will try it without a gyro and see where that gets me first.