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« Last post by LukeZ on December 03, 2025, 08:34:32 AM »
Hi Fox, it's fascinating to see you working, and what is possible when a real engineer tackles a challenge. An inexpensive but capable sound card is definitely one of those things people are frequently asking for, and doesn't really exist presently. I will be following your progress here with great interest !
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« Last post by IIHadesII on December 03, 2025, 01:28:19 AM »
Hallo Kettenpaul,
you are building a nice model there, a halftrack is on my list too.
i have a question to the Controll, are you gonna use the original TCB(Bought by torro) or how you are gonna controll it ?
Best Regards Ilias
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« Last post by kettenpaul on December 02, 2025, 10:58:51 AM »
Fortschritt Zusammenbau
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« Last post by Foxhood on December 01, 2025, 04:21:17 PM »
Took a detour from my TCB iterating efforts to experiment with sound involving one of the smaller AVR-Dx (AVR64DD28) and its built-in 10-bit DAC.
My reasoning is that if the original OPSC was a 72Mhz ARM processor juggling "6" channels of stereo, 16-bit, 44Khz PCM data from a uSD card via a SPI bus. Surely a 24Mhz AVR processor could juggle a few 8-bit mono channels. Benedini showed it was possible for AVR to do sound and that was with a older memory constrained ATmega8 type connected to slow Flash memory, no DAC and long before libraries like sdFat became the optimized beasts we know today. Only thing the AVR lacks is a DSP for floating point math so one has to cheat a little to keep mixing data within the ballpark of the ALU by using bit-shifts and multiplications for manipulating volume.
Approach is fairly simple. Two output buffers with one marked as active. A timer routine slowly goes through the active buffer pushing the values to the DAC output while the processor is prepping the other buffer. Grabbing pages of 8-bit signed 22Khz PCM via sdFat from files, manipulating volume and adding them to the buffer being worked on. Been running through benchmarks with pages of 1024 bytes and i've managed to get it to handle 9 files before it started to fail at preparing before the DAC Timer caught up to it. Which is very promising considering the old benedini only managed 2 channels and the OPSC could do 6. Honestly would have been happy with just 4 really. The main reason I'm getting this far is because this little AVR has 8KB of RAM which lets the sdFat library spend far less time seeking as it would with older ATMega.
Next is to get Logic running and test with actual soundsets rather than little test-waveform files, oh and see if i can optimize the SPI driver as currently it is using the default on within the core. Since I'm working with raw-files without a sound library i got a lot of freedom in how i deal with data. Can even do stuff like pre-processing files to make playback easy (e.g. behead them so you get RAW) and simply check the available variable to know when the last few pages are up for fading. Gonna take a lot of coding. But the progress thus far is fairly exciting.
I've also drafted a small board for it with the minimum components to see how small it actually is. It is really just the AVR, a generic LDO, uSD Slot and the MAX9768 (same as regular OPSC). BOM puts it at like 10$ plus PCB which makes it the cheapest sound-card yet, may be good for existing boards, though i am definitely looking at fitting the circuit unto my TCB Re-design as a co-processor. Perhaps even see if i can put it in charge of some 32A drivers...
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« Last post by IIHadesII on November 26, 2025, 12:39:36 AM »
I will try, its gonna take some time becouse my time for hobby is very limited. But i did some rough calculations and i think that the easyest and cheapest way is to order a pre assembled OP TCB from China (pcbway or so) and sound board+esc, if im not wrong it will cost you around 140€ in total(of course you still need a receiver and transmitter etc). If you order the fatfingers pcb and the electronics+arduino+sound board+motor esc= the price is almost the same but with the difference that you have to solder everything by your self and put the pcb together and hope you did no mistakes..but I will think about what is the better way for me and when I will start doing it, I will post it here. But as I said, very limited time xD
Best Regards
Ilias
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« Last post by LukeZ on November 25, 2025, 01:27:38 PM »
Hi Ilias, thank you for the kind words about the project, I appreciate it and I'm glad you like it.
It's true that there is a lot to learn, especially if you are going to try to create your own board. But it can also be rewarding and gratifying to assemble something yourself, and if you like what we call "tinkering" in English then you certainly have many hours of fun ahead of you (and probably a few hours of frustration!)
But do let us know if you build a FatFingers shield, I'm sure others would be interested to hear your insights about the process.
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« Last post by IIHadesII on November 25, 2025, 12:57:50 AM »
Hey, thank you very much for the information. I really appreciate your effort, and I truly love the work that has been done so far. I’m pretty sure that, from my point of view, your TCB is the best control board for tanks out there.
I’ll try to use the Fatfingers shield and reconstruct it, and I hope I’ll make it to the desired finish line =D. As a new member, it’s a bit overwhelming to understand everything that has been discussed in the forum — you basically have to read everything from the beginning, and that can take ages xD.
I am building a StuG IV right now with the original TCB and OP Sound Board and OP ESC, the elektronics are set up and working fine but i have to finish tank now and build something for the barrel elevation, barel left/right and recoil, all driven by servos but im not sure how to hook up everything (mechanicaly). And after that i would like to upgrade some older tanks of mine to a TCB (Arduino+Fatfingers)and test everything in a IR Battle.
Best regards,
Ilias
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« Last post by LukeZ on November 24, 2025, 03:01:30 PM »
If you want to assemble something and have all the same functions as the original TCB, the FatFingers shield is your best option. The Baldock shield is missing certain capabilities, including IR.
None of the shields will include sound (the Heclo shield because the Teensy 3.2 is no longer available, and the other shields because they are using the same design as the TCB). However all three shields will still let you use Taigen sound cards, or the Benedini/DasMikro sound cards.
The Heclo shield has onboard motor drivers. The FatFingers and Baldock shields will require ESCs.
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« Last post by IIHadesII on November 24, 2025, 09:42:18 AM »
Ok, thank you for the replies so far, I really appreciate it.
So what would be the go to for low cost ? I read a lot about the shields that are done so far , baldogs shield and fatfingers, but I didn't quite get the difference, both need an sound modul and both need esc for drive motors, but both also can use servos for turret functions and both can use IR battle systems ? So what are the main differences,i really try to figure out the "best" about easy use, cost efficiency and most functions....I'm so confused about all that.i can do some soldering too as long it's not to much smd. I would like also to use home made IR transmitter/receiver for battle system.
Ilias
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« Last post by LukeZ on November 24, 2025, 08:10:23 AM »
Hi Ilias, Yes, it is very unfortunate the Teensy 3.2 was discontinued. Unfortunately, the replacement versions that are now sold (Teensy 4.0 for example) are very different and it is not possible to simply move the firmware from the old chip to the new chip, in fact the firmware needs to changed and we need a completely different approach to creating sound. Maybe some day someone will make these changes, but it is a big undertaking, and for now we must consider the Open Panzer sound project to be at an end. The Taigen sound cards are the best alternative if the goal is to keep the cost as low as possible. Their sound is not great, but they are very inexpensive, and they can be connected directly to an Arduino Mega. In answer to your question about the Heclo Shield, yes it does include motor drivers, so no additional ESCs are necessary. At the same time, it is good to remember that ESCs can be purchased for very little money from the Chinese sellers. I think you could probably purchase 4 ESCs (two for the drive motor, and two for the turret rotation/elevation) for probably 50€. Finally, in regards to the Scout ESC that you have - you do not need to use an FTDI cable with them, nor will they transmit any information in Snoop. All you need to do is connect the Scout to the TCB with a serial cable as shown in the Wiki here. You do not need to worry about the baud rate - when the TCB communicates with the Scout it will manage that automatically.
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