1

Open Panzer Help / TCB Lead Wires and Accessories

« on: February 10, 2017, 09:48:45 AM »

A question arises from my current experimentation with custom upgrades to my Taigen tank electronics... 

What lead wires and accessories do you envision will be sold WITH the TCB once it becomes available?  At a minimum, I would think a lead to connect the receiver and a micro-B USB extension would almost be a necessity.  Thoughts?

2

Open Source Sound Dev / Open Source Sound Files

« on: February 02, 2017, 12:16:20 PM »

I'm noticing that finding a good collection of sound files that are located all in one place is proving to be difficult. 

Unless I've missed something very obvious what do you think of the possibility of starting a collection of non-copyrighted materials on the GitHub repository under the Open Panzer project?  While I am unsure whom would be interested, I certainly would like a centralized locale for all those amazing recordings that are just floating around on hard drives.  Plus it would save a ton of time trying to locate good files to work with.  Maybe we could find a sound engineer "volunteer" to go to Bovington in April to get some decent recordings on Tiger Day 2017.   
 
Setting up a sub-categorized section (perhaps searchable) with all of the common sound types for the hobby such as engines, mechanical, gunfire and explosions would be ideal.  I would recommend a minimum requirement for quality such as uncompressed .wav 16-bit 44.1kHz.

Any thoughts?  Perhaps if it takes off we could solicit members on some of the RC forums to contribute what they may have in their private libraries.  Just a hope I suppose... 

-Marc

3

Open Source Sound Dev / Sound System Speakers

« on: January 29, 2017, 11:04:42 AM »

I'm planning on running this question through the folks over at RC Universe as well but wanted to go ahead and get a thread started here.

Aside from the stock speakers that have come with my Taigen tanks and a handful of old surplus PC speakers I wanted to glean from the experience of others what they considered the best available for quality of sound and robustness.  I figure that a quality speaker is going to be just as important, if not more so, than the underlying hardware and firmware.

Of all of the components I've been gathering up I have yet to decide on what I will do about speakers.  I have even played with the idea of also acquiring a sub woofer to enhance the true grumble and roar one would expect from a tank (as long as I don't end up shaking it apart first).   

So what are your thoughts?

4

TCB Dev / Setting up a software development environment and other random experiments

« on: January 13, 2017, 06:35:16 PM »

Well it seems I have entered into this hobby at an exceptionally interesting time! 

With the intent of starting a new hobby with my son I recently acquired two new Taigen 1/16 IR tanks (the Panther G and Sherman 75).  Even before we opened the tanks on Christmas day I was looking through the vast amounts of forum information at RC Universe and drew the conclusion that I wanted more control of the tanks and how they interact and are controlled.  I also quickly realized that Danville VA is a focal point for this hobby and is just up the road from us so having a Tamiya compatible battle system became a desire as well.

I wanted to raise and lower the gun via the left control stick and not have it "cycle" up and down (I would find another switch to actually fire the gun).  And from what I read and saw on youtube, I decided that I also wanted more realistic acceleration and deceleration rates.  Even having more and better sound options seemed like a good idea.

The day came when we finally opened the tanks and it was a blast.  I had planned ahead and picked up two 5000mA NiMH batteries and had them charged up to supplement the 2000mA batteries that came with the tanks.  Weather permitting, we ran and battled both tanks for many days.  I ended up purchasing a quad charger just so I could exercise and keep enough batteries up to continue running!

As we played with the tanks I continued reading and learning and just as I was about to put a new wish list together for new hardware somebody said to me "wait a few days for something special".   

So I did and am very glad I waited.

Every time it seems I am ready to look for something new and improved you folks keep delivering.  Thank you!

And now the Open Panzer project! 

I haven't been in a R/C hobby for nearly two decades so I am stumbling along a decently sized learning curve trying to catch up with what happened over the years.  Fortunately, I have been developing embedded software for the better part of thirty years so I have that going for me.  Filling up a forum post with my mostly inexperienced attempts to get what I want might provide a little entertainment to some and perhaps hope to others.   

I downloaded and installed the Arduino 1.8.0 IDE yesterday only to find an update today.  So I will go back and install 1.8.1 and continue my post.