There's something wrong with my electronics...

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Fenrir
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There's something wrong with my electronics...

Post by Fenrir »

Hello, I doubt many will remember me as I think I posted once but anyway, I recently became interested again in pursuing my course of action in making an antweight robot but have come across a few problems, the first of which being that something in my selection of electronics isn't working and I'm not entirely sure what it is. All parts were provided by PeteC other than a Fly Sky FS-T4B transmitter and paired FS-R4B receiver, and here's the issue in facing. Nothing moves. I place the battery in the correct place, pins the right way and I've tried motors and servos in every slot and no movement. I've tried charging the battery, a different battery, and I've tried re binding the Rx many times and sadly there's no LED on the Receiver so I can never tell if it's worked or not. I've even tried binding to a different receiver and using that but still nothing. It just seems strange because surely there would be some kind of movement because of the trims but no, nothing. I swear o heard movement for a split second from the motors one time I turned it on but still nothing happened and I was wondering if I could get some help before I go insane trying to make this thing work despite having no expertise in the subject whatsoever haha.

Another note is I came back to this stuff after a year untouched, it having all worked in the past but nothing appears to work now.
Hogi
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Re: There's something wrong with my electronics...

Post by Hogi »

Hello and welcome back. :) problems like this are always frustrating but the feeling you'll get when it all eventually goes right is worth it in the end. What ESCs are you using for the motors? Could it be those that are going wrong? Also, are you sure you have it all plugged in the right way round? If not, this could be what caused it to not work. Otherwise, I can only imagine it might be a transmitter issue. Someone else could probably be more help.
Daniel Jackson.

Team Hectic.

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BeligerAnt
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Re: There's something wrong with my electronics...

Post by BeligerAnt »

1) Do you have fresh/charged batteries in the transmitter?
2) Do you have the battery connected to the receiver correctly?
3) Ensure that the receiver is bound to the transmitter. Be patient and don't put the Tx & Rx too close together.
4) Connect just one standard servo to one of the servo channels on the receiver.
5) The transmitter should control the servo.

If it all worked before it should work again unless you've damaged it by connecting the receiver battery the wrong way round.
Binding can be tempramental, follow the instructions carefully.
It can be difficult to sort this sort of problem out without some spare parts and some way of ensuring that the parts actually have the right voltage on them.
Gary, Team BeligerAnt
Fenrir
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Re: There's something wrong with my electronics...

Post by Fenrir »

You'd never believe it but immediately after posting this first message I decided to try one last thing and charge the battery again like I had done earlier. This time though, the LED went red on the charger instead of green, so after leaving it for a few minutes I tried it with the receiver and everything and it all worked perfectly. Since then I've finished a robot, however it's pretty fragile, and has a ridiculously large fin in order to aid with self righting, and I believe it's a little too big to fit in the four inch cube and thus technically is not an antweight. I do have a few other questions though, regarding materials. I used a soldering iron to bend the 1mm polycarb for tabs to fit different panels on separately, and used some superglue gel to glue the panels to the tabs, and it resulted in a somewhat shoddily built robot, but it works ok. I was wondering if anyone had any tips for construction if I used aluminium instead next time, or another sheet of polycarbonate, say, how to cut it, how to bend it and how to affix panels together in a more robust manner. That would be great if so, and thanks for the help, even if it was a simple fix in the end.
Occashokka
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Re: There's something wrong with my electronics...

Post by Occashokka »

I use aluminium and epoxy for everything but no one else really likes aluminium so it's probably not the best advice but most people usually bend 1mm cold and then I think most people screw/nut and bolt the parts together
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joey_picus
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Re: There's something wrong with my electronics...

Post by joey_picus »

I do use 0.5mm aluminium in a composite with thin carbon fibre for non-critical panels - I've never really had good results with bending, though, so I tend to drill and tap blocks of thicker aluminium or HDPE at right angles to mount it. M2 bolts work quite well in my experience :)
Joey McConnell-Farber - Team Picus Telerobotics - http://picus.org.uk/ - @joey_picus
"These dreams go on when I close my eyes...every second of the night, I live another life"
Fenrir
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Re: There's something wrong with my electronics...

Post by Fenrir »

Ok, thanks guys, I guess for next robot I'll try some 1mm perspex and using bolts to stick it together. Maybe try some zip ties to hold down important components. Are there any cheap pre made motor mounts btw; I bent my own last time but they didn't entirely fit properly.
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Shakey
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Re: There's something wrong with my electronics...

Post by Shakey »

I'd stick to polycarbonate, best plastic I've found to use in antweights. Perspex/Acrylic is a bit brittle and may shatter on impacts with spinners.
Nuts And Bots - For all your components and ready built antweights!

Alex Shakespeare - Team Shakey / Nuts And Bots / Team Nuts:
AWS 44, 45, 49, 51 & 55 Winner - Far too many robots!
Fenrir
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Re: There's something wrong with my electronics...

Post by Fenrir »

Ah ok. A quick ebay search earlier returned no results for polycarb so I originally dismissed it, but after double checking that appears to have changed significantly haha. I have a fair amount of leftover stuff, just missing a second transmitter and my receivers a little smashed up. Thats another question actually, do receivers work with other brands? Say I had a flysky receiver, would it work with another brand of trasnmitter; even if that receiver had push button binding and the transmitter was designed for bind key binding?
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Shakey
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Re: There's something wrong with my electronics...

Post by Shakey »

It's not so much the brand that matters but the protocol. Do you know what protocol your TX uses and your RX uses?
Nuts And Bots - For all your components and ready built antweights!

Alex Shakespeare - Team Shakey / Nuts And Bots / Team Nuts:
AWS 44, 45, 49, 51 & 55 Winner - Far too many robots!
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