RichJohnson

We really need a new control board on the market. Something that easily mimics the tamiya protocols with few options to mess up the programming on that will work for beginners or those that want better operation and battle play than henglong but dont need all the advanced set up options of the other boards available.

The DKLM DKTank is quite good but only produced in runs of 10 off an on, in Russia, so...... unknown

The IBU2 Ultimate is un-useable for IR battling. The large inertia programmed into it that you cannot turn off makes it horrible to drive and try to battle. Ivano ruined his product IMHO.

The Clark boards seem to have a lot of problems any more. Nearly everyone in my club has been sending their boards back to Clark, some through the dealer they bought it from, for various failure repairs. Some involving the audio amp some, other issues. They just dont seem very reliable any more. I have two and so far Im lucky.

The other boards that are really fancy and offer lots of options are way overkill and quite costly. Like Elmod and Bier.

Im hoping DKTank will come up and be a sustainable supplied product but who knows at this point.

oldwolf75

This is an interesting topic. I wonder what most people in the hobby want to see in a board? Do most want support for tanks that zoom around at the limits of the technology, having lots of hit points and all tanks being “balanced” in combat abilities? Utterly unrealistic but quick and exciting? Or do most want more of a realistic simulation, where movement is slow, tanks are realistically unbalanced with some being much superior to others, ammo is limited with rounds fired are counted, etc?

Boards that offer a wide range of choices so that either of the above extremes could be accommodated are tempting but would probably be expensive.

To the best of my knowledge Tamiya boards already have capabilities built in that I have never heard of being used: IR repair codes for “healing” lost hit points, 2 shot codes where one hit scores two points of damage and one shot one kill codes that do as described.

Personally I like the idea of increased realism even if it means the tanks are hard to maneuver and some tanks have clear advantages.

Crius

A couple have tried, just in the last few years, like the ASP and the TCB, but the production runs were short and then they seemed to just disappear. Personally, I think the asp is about the best tank board I've ever used, but as far as I know Kevin has no plans to produce any more.

jarndice

My biggest regret is I only bought 2 ASP2 boards thinking that I could always buy more when I needed them,
But Kevin being the genius that he is moved on so no more ASP2 boards

oldwolf75

Pardon my ignorance but what were the properties of the ASP and ASP2 boards?

CaptB

For me the Heng Long vers. 6 or 6.1 is ideal. Got just enough of everything in it. perhaps a few more different engine sounds would be nice but as it is - I'm going down this route for my collection.

Cheers

CaptB

Shorty54

Its such a small hobby I don't think we will see it happen. Majority of sales is cheap plug and play quickly, if it breaks, throw it away, loss of interests. Not many want to stick thousands into their RC vehicle, let alone 3 or more. A small amount do though, but not enough. I wish the boards would have replaceable parts on them, a tech manual, and parts breakdown with numbers and suppliers. Then you would have the option to repair your own boards with oem parts. Then the 1 or 2 distributors who repair them, only for hobby and are usually so busy with everyday life have no time, wouldn't be so overwhelmed. I assume the majority of sales are for kids and young adults who have no clue about how anything works except maybe able to install some AA batteries. If that doesn't fix it, then its considered junk and throw it away and maybe try another plug and play hobby. I said a few years back I would never own another Clark board, well just a month or so ago, I bought 2 more.....now I see Richs post and got sick to my stomach. I have 2 TCBs that set in a bin, along with 2 full sets of Battle Armor stuff, again no more support and no parts distributors. Tamiya tanks can be boring, but sometimes I think, If I dint purchase the TCBs and Battle Armor stuff, I might have another complete Tamiya that just works in my arsenal.

Enjoy,
Shad

Elwarpo

If one tank was hugely superior to another, why would you choose the weaker tank to battle, everyone would just run the super tank. What people forget is reliability, fuel availability, ammo availability, air support, artillery, infantry AT weapons played a more important part than tank on tank battles. Almost as many King Tigers were lost to mechanical breakdown or destroyed by their crews due to lack of gas than lost in battle. Yes you could have a super King Tiger, but for every 1 of them you would have 100 Shermans and 100 T34s. All these scenarios means tank battling would not be fun. So a balanced system like the Tamiya one is more realistic for the hobby to survive IMHO

CaptB

Actually, I too have several Clark Boards in my tanks and I have lost a few of them for no apparent reason. I set them up and installed them as per Clarks instructions and they still failed after a while. It's like they loose their programming as they start doing things that you did'nt originally set them up to do. I'm keeping the ones installed that work but where they are faulty, I'm replacing them with Heng Long v6.0s and taign barrel recoil boards - works a treat.

oldwolf75

Before anyone is going to produce a board they have to perceive a sufficient market to let them make a living selling them. It strikes me the first thing is to define what people want. Eventually, after enough people have chimed in on what they want, an opinion poll could be put together and posted on as many tank forums as possible to turn our wish lists into enough data to tempt someone to produce a new board.

As I briefly mentioned above, for me that means realism at the expense of game play / play balance.
Lots of flexibility and simplicity in how a board is configured would be ideal. Perhaps by means of a bluetooth connection to an app for setup.
The board needs to be produced by a company with some staying power. One person operations just aren't likely to stay in business.

Crius

The asp has a lot of good features, like the Juno soundboard, 20 W and three different speakers, you could fight with limited ammo and Kevin had all the Tammy codes in there, like the two shot kill code, Etc. Very good sound, very good performance, I wish I had bought more than just two. The two I have are in a pair of tigers that are model matched so I can switch back and forth from one tank to the other without having to turn anything on or off. Just a couple of buttons on the radio. I can start one tank, drive it for a little while, park it, switch the radio over to the other tank, start that up and run it, and then switch back and forth as often as I want to. And you have to remember that a lot of the guys that make boards like this have other interests that take priority for them. For example, Kevin likes the tanks, but his primary interest is diving. I believe he's actually a dive instructor. And then there's the whole profitability issue, I don't think anyone's going to get rich making boards for our tanks.

evan-RCU

While a couple people have called the H-L tanks toys comparing them to their hobby grade tanks we have to remember that, as mentioned, if you can't make a profit you won't stay in business. The H-L boards do what I want and all the people I battle with are running H-L tanks. Are they perfect? No. Are they a good value, absolutely.

oldwolf75

Thanks for the response. They sound like they were great boards. Limited ammo is an excellent idea.

RichJohnson

The HL 6.0 and higher boards are really taking over. They still lack a few things like tank class changing and slowing down on hits and the major ability to use a real radio. I just cannot drive a right hand tank. I started out with model warships long ago and built a few other RC vehicles and I always had throttle an steering on the left, so I just cant drive a HL in battle without lots of thought process consciously focusing on the driving and battling aspect of left hand right hand.

I loved the old IBU2. They were not that costly as a mid range board but those are gone with the new model Ultimate that is uncontrollable for battling.

I dont know what Clark's problem is and I dont like really calling them out as they are pretty much the only game on the market now except for the DKT from DKLM which I have high hopes for in the future. I have just seen so many Clark boards fail in the last two years, mostly the TK60 and 80 series. Lots of my club members have multiple tanks that are down for service right now waiting on boards to return from repair.

All the fancy stuff is nice if you want it. I use some of it with the DKT but I rarely install lights in my tanks and never smokers.

The class and hit system of Tamiya is the basis for all of this and needs to be carried into a new board that is less complex and more plug and play at a reasonable cost.

I have used the Tamiya Sheridan MFU which is the same as the Centurian now. It cost $250 from tamiya USA with all its special cables it needs. Costly yes, that is the most I have or would pay for a system but, it was bullet proof. I installed it in my Leopard 1 rebuild project. It worked great. Costly yes but simple and the only draw back is you cant reverse the servo recoil, or use a HL elevation motor or older tamiya elevation motor if you desire, just a servo, which I do, but just saying.

An optimum price range would be around $150 I would think. Do the 3 or 4 tank classes by switches and offer the two types of elevation or recoil. The SD card is a good way to do it but not necessary. Now the DKTank does all this and a bit more for a slightly higher target price but it is only made in small numbers and with the sanctions on Russia who knows what its future is now.

It just would be nice if IBU would fix their board issues and make it operate better for battling and driving then it would be relevant but the owner has not done it despite lengthy communication with him about it.

I was told there is a board in China that can run a hobby grade radio and does all the Tamiya stuff properly but we have not seen it yet since I was told two years ago. Also, supposedly there is the ability to connect up a hobby grade receiver to a henglong 6.0 and bypass its radio system to use it but nothing has been published how to do it, but the firmware is inside its chips.

tankme

I missed out on the ASP boards the last time they went on sale. I had limited funds back then, but it looked like a nice solution. Sad that it won't be produced anymore. I did get three of the TCB boards and although not perfect, they have lots of possibilities.

Crius

Now I'm feeling all nostalgic for the asp. I see that Kevin's website says they're out of stock, I think I'll email him and see what his plans are. I'll keep you guys posted.

heavyaslead

This has been a holy grail for years -finding a suitable replacement/alternative to the Tamiya system

I have tried a few types, some had issues which made me throw them in the trash, some are nice but I really dislike having to whip out my computer to 'program' a device. Should be like a car, intuitive, just start and go.

That said I can really only recommend the Heng Long TK-6.01S as the unit does do Tamiya IR protocol and has a few really nice features. The -S is important, as the new 7 seems to have appended the flexibility on connections
1. built in receiver 2.4GHz
2. choice of Servo or motor connections for elevation and recoil
3. Cheaper than Tamiya electronics
4. Battlesystem compatible (6 hit points, but does not slow on successive hits like Tamiya)
5. A couple sounds to choose from
6. relatively small size in enclosed package, no naked circuit boards

oldwolf75

I am not sure what you mean by “appended the flexibility on connections”. I have heard that their new boards only give two sound options. Apparently there are a few different pairs of sounds and while it should be possible for them to place sound set pairs such that one of the sounds is reasonable for the tank they come with, they seem to have been installing them randomly, resulting in some very bad matches. The newest Tamiya centurion seems to be using 6 hits for medium tanks now, so maybe the two systems are edging slightly together.

Tanque

I haven't been active in 1/16 in quite a while in part due to just about zero activity in this area. With no club
activity there's little point. However if for some reason I would re-enter the IR combat arena I'll just rely on
the remains of my old outdated IBU2 stock. The boards may have been problematic but I find them usable enough for my purposes.
IBU2 Base in particular work pretty well and the fancier Pro...

Jerry

Rad_Schuhart

Well, I remember back in the day when I said many times ASP2 was something incredible, out of this world. Almost nobody had interest, people were happy paying more for less with the Tamiya boards. It was (still is) indeed a great board with great sound and unmatched IR battle capabilities. You could do machine gun combat, select explosive and piercing rounds, one hit kill, select the ammo rounds the tank had, friend or foe recognition, IR repair (bergepanzer) and black box mode recording all what happened, for being able to read it at home. You could even see in your radio which tank shooted you... But nobody had interest on it, hence the low sales and the scarcity nowadays. I never ever battle, so for me all those functions are irrelevant, but I am still surprised it did not flourish in Danvile.

About the IBU 2 U. Well, I have no experience with it, but I have read that the inertia issue was fixed looooong time ago. Is a matter of updating the firmware. I had an IBU 2 and I liked, it was my first hobby board. Nowadays, it does not suit my needs at all, but I enjoyed it much better than Tamiya.

Clarks, agree, you won't see them in my tanks.

But I am not too sure if we really need more RC tanbk boards. At least I don't need anything else. I fitted Beiers in all my tanks, and I cannot be happier. Sure it does not have tamiya IR battle capabilities, but do you know why? I wrote it in my review here: https://radindustries.wordpress.com/...eier-sfr-1-hl/ but if you don't want to read it, I will tell you why: Most people don't care about IR battle at all. I don't know a single place in the entire Europe with IR battles except one or two in the UK. Most modellers enjoy driving and piloting their toys with realistic movements and not jackrabitting back and forth like I have seen in Danvile. If you, guys, want Tamiya IR on it, just write Beiers and they will implement it. As far as I know, a lot of american people complain about the lack of tamiya IR, I give the solution of writting the beiers for implementing it, and then nobody ever sent an email to them requesting it. It seems the interest or need is not too high or people are too lazy. No, you don't need to write them in german, they do speak good english.
Anyway, Rich, you say those boards are overkill, for me they arent, they suit all my needs. Yes, I need LOADS of user sounds and LOADS of lights to be a happy child, and I enjoy every minute messing with the config and asigning functions to the 16 channels I am using with them.

If I needed tamiya battle compatibility, Id add one of those Mako boards from RC tanks australia to a bunch of ESCs and a cheap soundcard. It would cost a super small fraction of the tamiya electronics price, and I'd still have way more functions and fun than with it.

Said that: I always love to see more and better electronics, so I encourage whomever reads this to produce new and exciting all in one boards with as many functions as possible!

tankme

I had lots of interest in ASP, but the information was sporadic and the manufacturing even more so. Now that I have the means to buy them they are gone. I would have interest in the Beier, but like you said...no IR capability (which I do use) and the price. I have close to 20 tanks at this point. Putting the Beier boards in all of them would be cost a pretty penny and be overkill for most of them. I have a lot of tanks which are really just "battle tanks" (like my T34s) and I don't need 16 different voice tracks or 18 LED outputs. I'm exaggerating of course, but a Clark TK40 or TK50 suits those tanks just fine. I guess I haven't been bitten by the Clarks yet. I have two TK40SP, two TK50SP, and one TK80. I hate the older Tamiya systems as there is very little flexibility and frankly they are huge. I haven't used the newer Tamiya system from the Sheridan and the Centurion, but from what I saw the tank control of the drive motors is no better than the old version.

In my ideal world there would be a company that made a battle capable board that has a lower end model (cheaper for those that don't about a million functions) and a higher end model (with all those LEDs and sound tracks). Hell make them as one board that can have a daughter board as an extender to give all the additional stuff. That way if you have a basic board and want to upgrade to all the bells/whistles you can buy it later. The boards could be stacked like the ASP to make the footprint smaller. OK...hell just bring back the ASP...lol

heavyaslead

What I meant about connections is the new TK7 seems to have fewer connection options such as looks like no more servo connections, but it appears the TK7.1 does have these connections, so hopefully the 6.1S and the 7.1 have the same options.

RichJohnson

Last I communicated with RC Tank Electronics the UK dealer, he told me IBU had not removed the fixed inertia from the firmware. That was probably late summer 2020.
I would imagine that given the large amount of communication between myself and RCTE in the UK that he would let me know if IBU actually fixed their inertia problem because he knows I would come back as an IBU customer in a heartbeat. And I have told the IBU Mfr the same thing in my several correspondence with him until he ignored me.

Also one of our club members late last year bought an IBU2 Ultimate to use in his abrams while his TK 80 went back to clark for a repair.
He got the IBU from RCTankDe. It had the fixed intertia and he could not battle his abrams effectively or even safely on our huge field so he got mad and gave up and put it away.

One system I really liked was Dan's Battle Armor units that culminated in the BARC 3 or BARC 4. They were stupid simple and very good but they relied on the old RX-18 units from HL for the ESC and operation of the tank while connecting to a hobby radio and Tamiya apple. I wound up burning up the RX-18s back then and moved on to IBU and Dan retired and closed up. But he had a good product.

DKLM is the newest guy on the market with a product and while it offers alot and is pretty good, so far I have been beta testing them as retail products. Each short run is updated with feedback from users. Sadly, yeah the consumer is the beta tester...But I like the ones I have. Im still trying to get the one in the merkava to turn sharper by slowing the inner track rather than braking it and skid steering. It may be a setting value I have not hit yet or it may be it just wont do it. But my M51 DKT board does seem to slow the inner track much more in a turn than my merkava. In any effect they are good enough I can rely on them and I like the functions and operation.

tankme

Rich,

I have the same issue with my Clarks with difference in behavior between models. My T34/84 properly turns as a skid steering tank. The SU-152 has the same board type and settings, but doesn't skid steer as easily. I'm going to blame differences in the chassis as I don't think the Clark actually "brakes" the inner track. I think it more just stops putting power to it. So when the heavier tank turns it's dragging the whole chassis instead of stopping the inner track. Of course they do have different gearboxes/motors so that could be why they drive different.

oldwolf75

Thank you for clarifying. I was wondering if there was going to be a 7.1. Good to hear.