Originally Posted by RichJohnson

The problem is LukeZ, marketing and support etc.
I bought electronic interface boards from a genius such as your self that interface a military 2 way radio into a computer to run TTY emulation rather than mil standard stuff that is unobtainable and to make our collectables work for ham radio stuff, as well as other electronic boards this guy has made. He draws them up and gets them made and sells them and supports them and warrantys them etc.
Your failure in marketing is putting it out there and saying here it is. Go buy it from hobby king.
RCTE and Clark warranty their products and provide support. Buying from Hobbyking is not a good marketing solution. The other two major draw backs to this system are locating suitable outsourced ESC, of which I have no experience, yes the forum will help out. and the Sound module. I have no idea how to do that or set it up etc. IBU all the sounds you will need come on the SD card. Your system is a dream for people that are super sophisticated in this knowledge but just too much for a person to go it alone. Now if you had a business set up where you marketed the TCB and one or two reccomended ESCs as well as the reccomended Sound card, and could provide the sound files or a link to a database to down load them, then its a one stop shop for the technical impaired and it gets much closer to what the IBU is. Then its just the learning curve to set it up and get it working.
I would say I am an expert at the IBU with my experience using, troubleshooting and yes a bit of repairing and modding it as well. I have helped at least 5 people set up IBU tanks that were toally lost in the dark with the printed out instructions in front of them. So its not the easiest thing to assume everyone can take what you produced and run with it.
I was initially very interested in the system but myself was overwhelmed after doing some research for an ESC and Sound card and then with the board issues first time around and then the flakey HK dealing, I decided to continue with ibu. I know there were a few of us in Southern California that had interest in the TCB but the marketing and what not just didnt convince us to buy.
If you or someone had taken on the business of the Open Panzer project and run it, it would have survived and succeeded. Just my opinion on the subject and assessment of business. People are leery of spending money shooting in the dark with little support etc. Myself included.

What the hobby really needs is a simple plug and play system that works as good as tamiya for IR, is plug and play with a switch for what tank class you want. IBU was almost that but still complicated. Clark is dorky operation on their smaller boards until you get to the bigger units where channels separate everything out. BARC4 was awesome, but still relied on the rx-18,, the weak point and now a deadend component. Makko is almost there, but still not quite and very troublesome as they shoot well but dont score hits from tamiya worth a crap, evidenced by the random kid with a henglong panzer that is always the sole survivor of an 8 on 8 tank battle at the LA Museum where more than half are tamiya systems filled up with clark and me the lone IBU.