It's good to keep striving for better things. To try and find that next advantage.
Before going into the future you need to participate in a battle to appreciate what still needs to be developed to help expand this hobby of ours. 1. Cheaper more "Kurt (aka non engineer)" friendly control systems for power and control. 2. Cheaper reliable turret ring and rotate power/control 3. Cheaper weapon system/mounting/firing 4. Cheaper/powerful motor/battery system 5. Cheaper/easier to build hull systems 6. Cheap/easy to build/ repair/ track system with auto tensioning 7. Make it all plug n play, oh, and inexpensive While I too am interested in gas or other power engines, there is a whole lot of things that could be improved upon to make it easier for people like me that have limited skills, equipment, time and money to get up and running in this hobby. Another thing that should be considered is weight. I'm not getting any younger and dealing with a 1/6 scale 120lbs tank is not fun. Light weight materials, construction techniques, Lipo batties, etc need to be investigated and the experience shared for all of us to benefit. Not too long ago there was a proliferation of build techniques and experimentation documented in this forum. Things seem to have been spotty as of late for progress. Or I haven't been paying attention enough and missed a bunch of stuff. The tech pages of the site still get turned to by myself and others and maybe they need to be updated with some of the newer tech being used or discarded. I enjoy tinkering but getting the first one up and running should be as painless as possible to enable others to get tanks out there to battle and/or show to draw more participants in their area so the battles may proliferate and cut down on the need to travel 500 or 1500 miles once a year to sling paint. The MAG, PUFF, and others have worked hard to get this hobby going. It is time for all of us to try and continue building on what they have started. Think about this; what happens if Frank and the boys get bored or jump totally into boats or something new ? What happens to "us"? Kurt Sent from my iPad On May 15, 2012, at 7:14 PM, Buck Cronk <[email protected]> wrote: > The possibilities of technology advancement and development are as limitless > in this hobby as in the real thing. > > On Tue, May 15, 2012 at 4:45 PM, Loren <[email protected]> wrote: > Heh, I'm going for a Bolo. Just tell it where to go and if it has > permission to shoot. I doubt I'll ever be doing all the programming > for that myself, but something like this controller would make things > much easier, allowing you to use simple PWM signals in your code > instead of writing a function for stepping the motor directly. > > On May 14, 3:54 pm, Buck Cronk <[email protected]> wrote: > > Agreed, Loren. I do like robots. I'm kind of young, but have some > > experience. Someday I want to escalate the battle by incorporating a dot > > sight and a camera that feeds to the controller, so I can shoot with > > greater accuracy. How about an onboard computer hooked to a rangefinder > > that automatically compensates for the distance, and a little radar set > > that... well, that would be very cool. Infrared detectors, maybe.... All a > > bit farfetched. But I want to be smart enough to do it anyway. The stuff > > they have on the real things would be very cool applied to something like > > this. I don't know if it would have too much of an advantage, but it'd be > > fun to do and awesome to describe when showing off your vehicle. > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > On Mon, May 14, 2012 at 9:54 AM, Loren <[email protected]> wrote: > > > These wouldn't be for drive motors. A stepper setup wouldn't be worth > > > it unless you're using computer control to try to precisely control > > > the position of the tank. I plan on doing that eventually, but even I > > > don't plan on doing the drive motors like this. Really, the torque > > > needed for the tracks is more servo territory anyway. > > > > > Mass produced hobby servos make steppers impractical for us up to a > > > certain point. 1/4 scale servos beat out steppers for elevation, and > > > I'm not sure the precision is worth it for turret rotation for most > > > tanks. NOw, when nerds like me put computer targeting in a tank, it > > > makes more sense, but I'm not sure it returns enough benefit for most > > > people. This would be of more interest for robot folk. > > > > > You can get some crazy torque in a stepper, but it costs a lot more > > > than the scooter motors and such people generally use. > > > > > -- > > > You are currently subscribed to the "R/C Tank Combat" group. > > > To post a message, send email to [email protected] > > > To unsubscribe, send email to [email protected] > > > Visit the group athttp://groups.google.com/group/rctankcombat > > -- > You are currently subscribed to the "R/C Tank Combat" group. > To post a message, send email to [email protected] > To unsubscribe, send email to [email protected] > Visit the group at http://groups.google.com/group/rctankcombat > > -- > You are currently subscribed to the "R/C Tank Combat" group. > To post a message, send email to [email protected] > To unsubscribe, send email to [email protected] > Visit the group at http://groups.google.com/group/rctankcombat -- You are currently subscribed to the "R/C Tank Combat" group. To post a message, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe, send email to [email protected] Visit the group at http://groups.google.com/group/rctankcombat
