Anomie

jeez... i feel like such a nobody now.

Anomie

oh, maybe not.

whatever.

how is everyone?

nothinbetr2do

i'm fine, how are you?

elven wizard

Hi Anomie

Foxy

Wow! Welcome back!! Where you beeeen?

FahrtAutoRC

Pshhhh. Part-timer. Go back to your "real world"

Anomie

um... just sitting here trying to work out my years-old steering issues on the endless truck build. you were absent for a while, too, right?

Anomie

hiya mr. eccentric

Foxy

Yeh, world of warcraft consumed me for a year. I got over it.

Anomie

a relationship revolving-door consumed me for a year. now i'm back where i should be... working on the truck! yay!

have you ever hooked up an ESC to the steering channel? will it move the motor? just wondering...

Foxy

Yeh I have and yeh it does. At least it used to in 1989 lol, that was the last time I owned an electric....strangely, until the day before yesterday, I picked up a Savage Flux, I have to say my fuel days may be mostly behind me now. If you'd said to me 2 years ago, that 2 years from now, you'd be singing the praises of brushless and lipo, I'd have told you to go forth and multiply, but there's no denying it anymore. You should see this thing go. It's in-frikking-sane and it runs for a half hour too.

Anomie

but you were such a 1/5 fuel-head! dude... the power of the electric ease cannot be denied.

ok, i need to explore this ESC steering thingy. i need the motor to move FAST, like 40k RPM, and react to the precise control of the radio's steering. wanna do an experiment for me? pretty please?

Foxy

You want me to swap the steering and throttle channels on my esc and tell you if my house burns down? We're talking 4S lipos here and a 2350kv motor. Don't you wanna ask one of the tamiya guys? lol

Foxy

I've just been thinking, if you want to use your ESC like a servo controller and use a motor as the servo, it ain't gonna work, due to the brake/reverse thing. Only when the motor has come to a complete halt will it engage the opposing direction. For example, if you were 'steering' right, then you wanted to steer left, you'd have to tap it left (which would brake, holding you steering right), then move it left to change direction. Hope that makes sense.

Anomie

dork.

don't blow anything up... i just need to know if the motor will move and position itself like a servo, but fast. i sold off all of my radios and crap in order to work on the mechanical stuff. otherwise i would try it.

do it!

Foxy

It won't work, see above :P

Anomie

perhaps i'm going in the wrong direction with this. thanks for the help.

i'll keep trying with the stepper idea. i'm finding that the robotics people are doing something similar, albeit much more slowly.

SyCo_VeNoM

If you recalibrate the ESC to the steering channel it should work. I did it with a modified airplane controller for a tracked vehicle I made a while back using 2 traxxas xl2.5's

Foxy

Funny you mention steppers, it immediately reminded me of wiper motors. Sure, they're slow, but I bet they can be made faster with a few volts, and very cheap at the scrapyard.

Anomie

i found [link=http://arduino.cc/en/Tutorial/MotorKnob]this tutorial[/link] and can likely turn the pot with a standard servo and then just program the microprocessor to step the steering motor as far as i need. it's a bit convoluted, but at this point i'm losing hair over the whole thing. my design limits were not realized when i built the mechanical part of the steering system.

hey... are you gonna move my thread because i'm getting technical? should i post some silly crap in this thread so it can stay in the off-topic?

Foxy

No, call it an ex-mod privilege Unless you want it moved, in which case it would be my pleasure.

Anomie

i thought of that as well, but they are generally really large and heavy (like my attitude).

Anomie

you're too sweet, mister.

elven wizard

elven wizard

thanks Anomie, happy your back