RE: Channel mixing [TANKS]

["Steve Tyng" <SteveT44-at-comcast.net>]

Marc wrote:

 

> The reason I'm asking is that I found a 2 channel mixer board in the Conrad catalogue (well known in Europe, item nr. 225231-81 on www.conrad.nl) for only 17,95 euros. The text states that it is suitable for planes with V-system (?) and tracked vehicles. It controls servo's, so would this eliminate the H-bridge set up and all (or would the board contain this perhaps)?

 

You will still need a reversing motor controller per drive motor (an H-Bridge is a type of reversing motor controller).  Your current Anvilus controller is a combination of a mixing board and two motor controllers.  If you want to perform the channel mixing in your Tx, the setup in your model would be to have the two a motor controllers plugged into the the mixed channels on the Rx.

 

> Would the tx channel mixing have the same result or am I overlooking something?

 

Yes, it really doesn't matter where the mixing occurs.  Note that when you move away from a commercial controllers such as the Anvilus or Robot Power, you will be loosing some of the built-in added features such as bad signal filtering and loss of signal shutdown.

 

For anybody that is wondering what were talking about in regards to channel mixing.  To steer a tank requires controlling the direction (and in more complicated systems the speed) of the left and right tracks.  This is done with reversing motor controllers interfaced to the radio control receiver (Rx).  Since there are two motors, two radio control channels and controllers are required.  With a non-mixed setup you would have to control these two channels with two separate joysticks on the transmitter (Tx).  Some of you may remember the early electronic tank battle games that had this type of control.  Though two joysticks would work, it is difficult to control, requiring two hands to steer the vehicle -- you would have no hands left to rotate the turret or fire the marker.  Channel mixing allows you to control the tank with only one joystick of the transmitter.  The way it works is when you push the joystick forward (which would normally only effect one channel) the mixing converts this by adjusting both motor channels to increase at the same time, thus turning both motors on in forward or slowly increasing their speed depending on the type of controllers you have.  If while moving forward you move the stick the the left.  The mixing function reduces the speed on the left channel (or shuts it off depending on controller type) while keeping the speed constant on the right channel.  The tank now turns to the left.  This is channel mixing in a nutshell.

 

 

 

Steve Tyng