Man hearing all this makes me happy to own a HPI and LOSI.
To be fair, the engineering on the Traxxas hasn’t been all bad. The tranny is basically the most complex park of the car, and while it could be better, all of the parts are well machined and are made of hardened metal.
And again - I don’t actually LIKE Traxxas but since this poor thing is never going to be raced/bashed like a “normal” RC car I just needed a stable platform to work with which the Traxxas offerred.
Would I prefer a Losi to TA? Sure - in fact I looked into a TA at first but moved away from it due to some perceived issues at turning it into a robot.
Traxxas now uses metal gears for its trannys thankfully, on the gearing at least.
If you RC guys have info that shows another platform is/could be a better robot cough it up!! I’m not so far into the Traxxas that I couldn’t go with another platform (although I am about $400 in on the Traxxas now, but at least my batteries and charger can transfer).
I looked at a lot of other cars besides the Traxxas. So far, the Traxxas is still my favorite.
There are a couple of modifications I’m going to work on to help make this a better robot platform I think. Hopefully. 
Do share your ideas 
Well - for one I’m going to use a small angle bracket in the body mounts to stiffen them up just a little bit. Just to provide a bit more of a stable platform for the electronics tray. I’m also going to work on some kind of vibration damper for the tray itself to hopefully reduce some of the noise introduced by all the bouncing around it invariably takes.
I never really though much of vibration dampening, but you are right about it. The compass will need it, at least.
The accelerometer would need Vibration dampening. Or could you use some sort of smoothing function.
That’ll use smoothing I think - just a weighted average of the last x samples is probably the best bet. We’re not going to eliminate all the vibration, just what we can. 
Greg,
What if we just came up with our own version of the FW for the 9DoF? I have already made plenty of small changes…
Easy enough to do - I’ve been making a bunch of minor changes as well to fit my request/response paradigm.
We need someone to help us with the math, unless you are good with it, on the IMU. IF we only want to mod it a little, we may be ok, but any drastic mod will require some physics and/or math knowledge.
BTW: I’m on IM.
The whole matrix thing they use for the IMU is beyond me. Hell, I had a hard enough time with calculus. Now if you want me to do bitwise math in my head I’m your man since that’s all I deal with every day with routers. 
That’s good to know gregO.
I can comprehend the matrix, but I have absolutely no idea what it’s trying to accomplish.
Just thinking, what about a buggy for R/C control? They are much much lower to the ground, have nice wide wheelbase and everything is (usually) mounted on a single piece of aluminium/CF/plastic depending on the model. They have a wing at the back which is great for protecting electronics and their tyres are thinner, giving you less resistance. They also weigh about 1/4 as much as a truck.
OFNA make very cheap, yet reasonable quality systems: [url]http://www.amainhobbies.com/product_info.php/cPath/1_44_1258/products_id/140882/n/OFNA-Hyper-9e-1-8-4WD-Buggy-Rolling-Chassis[/url] All the more expensive Hyper parts are compatible so you can upgrade bits and pieces of it to carbon or whatever when you want something faster/more solid. There is also a huge HK/CN aftermarket parts manufacturing chain for OFNA’s systems too.
In the end though, if you’re happy with what you’ve got, go with it 
I might convert my LST to electric (i was going to sell it, but haven’t had any buyers) then i can join in with you guys 
I was going to years ago but it was going to cost about $2k, now it’s only going to cost about $300 heh. Yay for hobby city.
Hi Mark,
I did look at buggys. The way the body is mounted makes it really difficult to mate a plexiglas tray to the vehicle.
[quote]For right now, I got almost the entire Xmission taken apart. The only reason I am stopped is because my electric screw driver ran out of juice, so I have to wait for it to recharge. Whatever I fried, it’s deep within the case.
[/quote]
Hi Guy,
Wow you guy have got side track by the awsome speedy of the RC ;)…I would worry about the intel. matter of the robot first until it gets to a level where it can autopilot on a designated map then I would think about the speed thingy later if that even possible, May be I have different expect of the RC, but initially I want a muscle RC that is capable of doing things that beginer robot kit cannot do. I can see it becomes very costly when using the robot in conjunction with speed. To be honest, as up now, I’ve not had a real floor test. I took it for initial spin only one time when I got the truck and even just that time, can see damaged on gear box cover and front bumper.
Though I have been busy lately, I have not got a chance to get back the game yet.
-Just a thought.
Thanks!
Hi Hai,
I was wondering what happened to you :D. Have you found an Oscope yet?