Basic Theory of Operation

The OSL board provides multiple light outputs suitable for LEDs, and each output can power multiple LEDs. Each light output can be made to do something in response to multiple conditions, or States. These are:

• Channel 3 - a switch on your transmitter with up to 5 positions
• Forward
• Reverse
• Stop
• Stop Delay (will activate after being stopped for a user-defined length of time)
• Brake
• Right Turn
• Left Turn
• No Turn
• Sharp acceleration
• Sharp deceleration

• At the very least, you must plug in the Throttle channel. Steering and Channel 3 are optional
• If you do not plug in a steering channel, then obviously you will never encounter the Right, Left and No Turn States
• If you do not plug in a third channel, the program will only use the values specified in Position 1 as the default. In other words, it acts as if you have a one-position switch that is always in Position 1
• If your third channel is only a two-position switch, the program will switch between Position 1 and Position 5
• If your third channel is a three position switch, you can select Position 1, Position 3, and Position 5. Positions 2 and 4 will be ignored.
• If your third channel is a 5 position switch, obviously then you can take advantage of all five positions States.
• For the third channel to operate correctly, and in fact, for all channels to operate correctly, you need to run through the Radio Setup once. This should be the very first thing you do when you first complete your board. Radio Setup has its own dedicated page.

For each light, you need to specify what will happen in each State - this is called the Setting. The possible settings are:

• ON
• OFF
• FADEON* (turns on slowly)
• FADEOFF* (turns off slowly)
• BLINK
• BLINK_ALT (will alternate with BLINK)
• FASTBLINK
• FASTBLINK_ALT (will alternate with FASTBLINK)
• SOFTBLINK* (emulates old style incandescent turn signal lights)
• DIM*
• XENON* (a special turn-on effect)
• BACKFIRE (blinks lights randomly for a short period of time, use this under the Decelerating state for tailpipe/muffler LEDs)
• NA (Use this when you don't want a State to do anything)

• * Settings marked with an asterisk require special processor resources that only exist on light outputs 1 - 6. These lights are marked on the bottom of the OSL board with a star, and they will function with any setting above.
• Consequently, light outputs 7 & 8 have restricted abilities. They can only generate the following settings: ON, OFF, BLINK, FASTBLINK, or BACKFIRE.
• For the positions determined by Channel 3, it is best to specify an explicit setting, in other words, you usually don't want them to be NA (set them ON, OFF, whatever).
• The opposite is true for all the other states - if you don't want anything to happen during the Forward state for example, set it to NA, not OFF. Otherwise, your light will turn off when moving forward.

A Scheme defines every Setting for every light in every State. You can have multiple Schemes; the code defaults to 2 schemes.

We have seen above that you can specify multiple lighting Schemes within the sketch. How do you select which Scheme is active on the model? This is done from your transmitter.

The video below illustrates the process, but here is a written description:

1. To enter Change-Scheme-Mode the vehicle must have been stopped for 3 seconds. Turn your steering wheel back and forth all the way to the ends quickly at least six times (three to the left and three to the right).
2. To acknowledge that you have entered Change-Scheme-Mode, every light hooked up to the controller (as well as Green and Red onboard LEDs) will “twinkle” (blink very rapidly) for a few seconds. This lets you know you're in Change-Scheme-Mode.
3. Once in Change-Scheme-Mode, all the lights will blink out the number representing the currently selected scheme (if you are in scheme 2 for example, the lights will blink twice, then pause, then blink twice again, over and over). To change schemes, turn the steering wheel briefly. If you turn it to the right it will increment to the next scheme, and if you turn it to the left, it will go back to the previous scheme. Each time you arrive at a new scheme the sequence of blinks will change to indicate which one is selected.
4. To exit the change-scheme-mode and save the selected scheme as the active one, hold the steering wheel all the way over (doesn't matter which direction) and hold it for two seconds.
5. All the lights will twinkle again and it will save that scheme as the active one. It will remember this setting even when power is lost, and next time you power up it will be on the same scheme as you left it. If you want to change it again, simply repeat the steps above.