Sounds like more pics are needed to convey the sheer amount of awesome in this thread!
So… Here’s another shot…
how much did you pay for it?
Alright, here’s where I’m at:
So, after fiddling for a while, I managed to pull the water tight box apart to get to the RX, and in turn, servo and ESc connections.
The issue that I’m having right now is that I’m lacking two key parts:
- 8 batteries for the Xmit
and - Some weird hex key to pull the rest of the watertight box apart.
My plan was to connect everything in normal RC mode and then probe the servo and ESC with my scope to see what timing settings to use for the drivers. Since I don’t have the Xmit batteries, I can’t really do that now. Since I don’t have the weird hex wrench, I can’t get the top of the water tight box off to pull the servo and ESC wires all out.
There is also some oil applied to the water tight box that needs to be cleaned off after I get the rest of the box apart.
[quote]how much did you pay for it?[/quote] $174 with shipping, from Tower Hobbies: http://www3.towerhobbies.com/cgi-bin/wti0001p?&I=LXNJJ0**&P=ML
…And more updates…
I didn’t have the right hex key to take the watertight box apart in my collection, but my dad did :whistle:
so, I :whistle: borrowed :whistle: it for a minute and managed to defeat the water box.
So, 1/2 of my problems are taken care of, now that the oil is cleaned up and the box is out of the picture. The RX is stuck inside the bottom of the box, and I’m not sure how to get it out. The RX isn’t going to be wasted, it will be used as a failsafe as soon as I can get it out of the box. :
Note the blue breadboard in the photo. That’s where the box used to be. Also note the water bottle. I included that to give a sense of scale. the truck is friggin huge!
I have a few other photos I want to share, so someone tell Josh to allow multiple photo uploads in a post 8)
multiple images or “code exchange?”… I say defiantly code exchange 
That works too ;D
…And more updates…
I’m at the point now where I can attempt to play with the ESC and servo independently. I already played with the servo, but I am a little nervous about connecting to the ESC since I have no idea what to expect (since I can verify what the receiver is sending until I get Xmit batteries).
I can at least confirm that the ESC has power (the LED is blinking, but I have not tried to signal it with the FEZ yet.
I think I’ll concentrate my effort on getting the RX out of the box now. I’m hoping it’s just stuck in there with double side tape, but it feels like it is really firm in there, so maybe not.
BTW: Thanks for the 500pts EXP boost, who ever gave it to me ! 
The 500 points were for the feedback on the beta.
…And even MORE updates…
I managed to get the RX free, but they had really sealed that sucker in there with this horrible foam rubber stuff, which luckily, I has able to dissolve with a few dabs of one of those cleaning pads.
I have been trying to get the ESC running, but so far, no success, although I haven’t really been trying…
I really need to get some batteries for my TX so that I can see how the RX communicates with the ESC. I’ll do that tomorrow. It’s a real bummer that Traxxas didn’t just put an AC adapter barrel plug on their TX like one of my Kyosho TXs has. If they did, I could have had things working by now.
And of course, this wouldn’t be a very good update with a good pic, so…
Just to give some input, the phrase of the day is “Allen Key”.
Word of caution from a dude who played with his first ESC last week on a simmilar project:
It seems that some of them are not so “roboust” and can fail if you treat them badly (as with experimenting) mine caught fire and melted (sob); there was a huge amount of smoke. Luckly it was outside. The ESC that came with my car didn’t have any googlable markings so I wasn’t able to find out much about it before I started experimenting.
Be carefull, we all want to know how it turns out ;D
Yikes. Thanks for the suggestion. What brand was the ESC? If it was a no-name I would be inclined to think that the Traxxas model would be smart enough to not - uh - catch fire.
In fact, I’m pretty sure it does have a thermal shutdown feature.
Thermal shutdown does not come into a effect if you cross some wires. I should snap some pics of my hpi blitz.
Spent a week googling and I’m only now finding that out. It’s good to ask questions.
lol i found out the same way just a year ago or so.
More updates
Well, I cobbled together enough batteries to make the radio work and I have been probing the timings for the last few minutes, and seeing the car run for the first time. The one thing I am noticing is that it is kinda scary just how powerful this car really is. If you use this in a project, I urge you to have some sort of failsafe (more on this below). These are not toys.
So, PSA aside, and back to the timings, it looks like the ESC uses typical RC timings. I didn’t grab any screen shots while testing because I was worried about the car running off it’s blocks and speeding into the wall, but it looks like neutral is about 1.49ms, which would indicate a positive extreme of 2ms and a negative extreme of 1ms.
I need to do more testing, with the motor disconnected to really verify these, however.
Attached is a photo of my test setup, hooked up the RX. It’s a little difficult to see, but should give a good overview of how I’m doing it. Further tests will be done with the signal line unhooked from the ESC.
All your pictures are crisp! Are you a good photographer or you have some nice camera?
Really, what kind of camera are you using? Please tell me it is not your cell phone camera!
Hi Gus,
The camera is a Canon 10D with a 50mm lens. I’m an awful photographer, but the point and shoot mode on the 10D compensates :
My dad is the big photographer in the family, and when he got his Canon 5D MK2 he wasn’t sure what to do with his 10D, so in an effort to recruit me to the “darkside” and get me addicted to photography, he gave me his old (but perfectly maintained) 10D and a 50mm lens to get me started.
It’s a really wonderful camera. Canon makes great stuff.
I have a feeling all of the real photographers in the thread /facepalmed when I said “point and shoot” on a 10D :wall:
“Canon 5D MK2”…holly crap! I am going to need to borrow this one from your dad and take some FEZ pictures.
Oh, I forgot to write about the failsafe.
Ok, so, as I said, these things are scary powerful. Instead of trying to integrate a failsafe into your main processing system, I would strongly advise a failsafe to be built into a dedicated chip running native code, like an ATmega328.
My failsafe will be configured in such a way that a pin on the Domino will be pulled high when the control frame starts and pulled back low when the control frame ends. The ATmega will be listening to these pulses and will allow pulses to continue to the ESC as long as the heartbeat from the Domino does not stick in one state for more than a set amount of time. If the heartbeat does stick, the program will immediately pull the ESC signal low and will not allow signals from the Domino to the ESC to pass until it is power cycled. It will also require an arming sequence from the Domino at startup.
Why not just use watchdog on FEZ? This is exactly what the watchdog is for 
“Wag the dog” dude, “wag the dog” 