I need ideas, sketches, 3D drawings or files on turret designs for the upcoming RC Tank Battle 2!
Join us on the forums and share your ideas; https://rcexplorer.se/forums/topic/rc-tank-battle-2-the-preparations/
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Help me design turrets!
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Lets show our appreciation for the creator of Triflight!
The Finnish mastermind Lauka has spent hundreds of hours since 2015 developing, testing and improving a special firmware for Tricopters. Very few firmwares out there that are optimized for servo control especially for the immensely complex task of yaw control. The symptoms of “normal” firmwares were that it felt like you were fighting a wet eel instead of having a locked in heading, the feeling got stronger the smaller the size of the craft and it was quite the experience trying to do acrobatics or even just flying in a straight line.
Lauka identified the underlying problems and set out to fix them. 28 releases later, we now have phenomenal performance! And the work continues to make it even better.
Lets take a moment to thank Lauka for his incredible work and his contribution to the tricopter family.
If you want to support Lauka in his efforts please consider making a contribution on his Patreon site or via paypal.
To follow along in the latest developments and helping out with testing, join the discussion on the rcexplorer forum. The next step in the Triflight development is full yaw performance even at 0 throttle!
Also we should thank Bengt-M and leothehuman for helping with the firmware development. Thanks guys!
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Some behind the scenes of the RC Tank Battle: Revenge video
Run forest! Run!
I’m one of those people that can’t fall asleep for about half an hour to an hour after going to bed. One night I got the idea to make another RC tank battle video. The first one was really fun to make and you tend to forget the difficult parts after five years, so you remember it being fun and easy. The seed was planted and I started slowly constructing a story during the many attempts to catch that elusive sleep fairy.
Christian Mogensen prepping fireworks on the tanks.
After a couple of weeks I had a story line and I decided to actually make the video. Since I now have some really cool toys, like a 3D printer and slowmotion camera I knew that I could take this video a level higher than the last one.
T-rex tank chassi
Hobbyking had sent me a T-rex tank chassi ages ago. It doesn’t have any kind of turret on it, so I posted a video asking for ideas for turrets that I could make. Some fantastic ideas came in and I started designing. A friend of mine, Terje (he’s on the forums here as well) Really helped out with the design. He singlehandedly designed the ED209 turret. With working gear driven tilt for the “arms”. Absolutely fantastic design. Thank you for that Terje.
Setting up a slowmo shot
In the meantime I designed the “bad guy turret” which is based on a concept tank called the Leopard III. Man, designing stuff takes a crazy long time!
ED209 getting ready
As soon as I had a design finished I started 3D printing. All in all it took almost a week to print all the parts that were used in the video. Really convenient though as you just start a print and then you can work with something else while the printer is regurgitating plastic.
This is the turret Terje designed. It’s the “head” from the robot called ED209 in the famous eighties movie Robocop. Printed in ABS at 0.2mm layer hight.
It’s designed in two main parts so that it’s possible to disassemble to get to the servo inside. Also made printing a lot easier.
Designed in Fusion360.
ED209 gets taken down by the “Sunlance” in the video.
That thing was crazy bright and burned super hot.
Poor ED. We had to light him on fire for the next scene again.
It wasn’t really part of the plan for the GoPro to get blasted with the fire. But luckily it survived with only 3rd degree burns (you can see the PCB a bit in one of the corners now)
The “Sunlance” was made from 150 sparklers.
One sparkler burns pretty slow. Having multiple strapped together creates a chain reaction, making the whole stack burn in about 2-4 seconds.
All fireworks that were mounted on the tanks were lit by hand. Timing and running like hell works a treat.
The explosives that were placed a bit under ground were remotely activated via an RC transmitter. A receiver with 3 brushed ESC’s, each one hooked up to a detonator allowed for very precise timing of the explosions.
3D printed canister loaded with gunpowder plus ignitor
Last time we used resistors to set off the fireworks. They are very reliable, but they take a couple of seconds to light and they vary in time. This makes it really difficult to do well timed stunts.
The igniters used in this video were made from a piece of brass wool dipped in a mixture of gunpowder and dissolved ping pong balls. Very quick, durable and reliable.
Rockets
The missiles were propelled with the rocket part of the firework rockets. Felt like a waste not to use them. A thing fishing line was used to guide the rockets to the right place.
It’s difficult to pin down exactly how ideas comes to you and stick. When thinking about this video I made up a small segment at a time. These segments could be like the one shown above. Using a fireworks tank as a decoy. Everyone that has fired one of these off have been severely disappointed (or was it just me that was traumatised by this as a kid?). I thought it would be a perfect segment that could work as comic relief and as a means to get into a slow pace part of the video so that I could do another build up.
For some reason the balloons didn’t get a big part in this video. Poor things. Wonder what their side of the story is.
The entrance of the bad guy was another segment I really wanted to have. It doesn’t quite cut well into the video as it’s shot in two very different locations on completely different surfaces and during night and day. But the heart want what the hearts wants. I think it cut acceptable enough in the end. We did about 20-30 takes of this shot in one evening. We stopped when we ran out of lighter fluid. The
tank smelled funny after that.
The “Grey” tank is actually the tank from the previous video. That poor thing has been through so much. It’s incredible that we managed to get it through the whole shoot. We glued the tracks and did so many repairs on sight. In the end we tried not to try and turn with it, but rather just drive as straight as possible. This so that the tracks would be less stressed.
This shot where Grey get’s hit on the underside by the mortar was not supposed to happen that way. It was supposed to explode in front of the tank while it was driving but I accidentally triggered the explosive too late. The tank was completely dead after the explosion and we through the whole PCB inside was destroyed. Luckily the explosion had just flipped the power switch!
The poor GoPros really took some punishment during the filming. I didn’t want to use the protective case as i wanted them mounted as low and flat as possible. This did result in that both now have cracked front screens (but who needs those right?) They were constantly thrown in the air, hit by fireworks and being burned, but the hardest impact has to have been the one in the picture above. The final explosion hurled the whole metal drivetrain of the tank plus motor straight at the camera. But it took it like a champ. Cool shot too!
I had an absolut blast doing this video. Editing is alway tedious as it takes soooooooo much time and energy. But the end result was worth every minute of it.
Might update this post with some more info. Let me know if you want it
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RC Afterhours watches the Tank Battle video
The RC Tank Battle sequel was premiered on the RC Afterhours podcast. Chris, Mike and Andre watch the video live and share their views and asks questions.
Link to the video if the above one doesn’t load
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RC TANK BATTLE: REVENGE
The second video in the RC Tank Battle saga.
5 years has pasted since Green was killed by an evil balloon. Grey is on his last mission, back where it all began.
Enjoy
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PayPal issues
Update: Paypal called and sent over a fix. Everything should be working again. Please let me know if you experience any problems.
For unknown reasons the PayPal checkout seems to be broken for us right now. We don’t yet know if this effects all customers or just some. Other sites, but not all, seem to have the same issue. We’ve contacted PayPal and hope to have a solution as soon as possible.
The message received is a bit puzzling; “This function is temporarily unavailable. Please try your payment again later by returning to eBay and clicking the My eBay button.”
We have not updated anything on our end. So our best guess is that it’s something on PayPals end.
We’ll update this post as soon as we have new information.
Anyone got any tips?
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Servos out of stock
Unfortunately the BMS210-DHM – Feedback servos are out of stock. We underestimated the number of sales and only placed the order a month ago (2 months delivery time). The estimated delivery time is early October according to Blue-Bird.
If you place an order now which includes a servo, your order will not be shipped until the servos get back in stock.
Sorry about the wait guys and gals.
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Having problem connecting to cleanflight? Update to triflight 0.7
The incredible Lauka keeps on making amazing improvements to the Triflight code. The latest version is rebased on betaflight and offers all the advantages of the latest betaflight release.
Recently cleanflight also rebased to betaflight (kind of ironic as betaflight was based on cleanflight). This is why the latest cleanflight configurator no longer works with pre 0.7 triflight versions.
We recommend that you now use the betaflight configurator instead of cleanflight to get all the advantages of the code.
You can read more about the improvements of the latest Triflight here
Direct download of the 0.7 hex for flashing; F3FC, Naze32. Other boards are available from the link above.
If you wish to use an older version of the Triflight code, you can by downgrading the cleanfligt configurator to a previous version.
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New Stainless Steel output shaft servo
The BMS-210DMH servo has now received yet another upgrade. It now features a much tougher stainless steel output shaft. This should improve durability and reduce the slop associated with repeated crashes.
The replacement gear set have also been upgraded to include the stainless steel output shaft. So if you have a BMS-210 servo you would like to upgrade that is the way to go.
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Upcoming: Short vacation – Delayed shipping and reply-time during June 22nd to July 2nd.
After the traditional Midsummer holiday (June 23rd) we will close down the premises for a short vacation. You can still place orders and/or contact us during this period, but we won’t be able to ship/respond until we open up again on July 3rd.
Orders placed after 09:00 CEST on June 22nd will not be shipped until we get back again, that is they will be shipped July 3rd or 4th. If you place an order before June 22nd, 09:00 CEST, this will be shipped as usual.
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Back in business
We are back from our trip to the Faroe Islands and orders will ship as usual again.
The trip was absolutely amazing. A lot of hiking to get to the top of mountains and see great views. I brought a copter with me and did some high speed flying and some pretty sweet dives down vertical cliffs. Unfortunately on one of those dives I managed to block my RF signal and the copter ended up at the bottom of the sea. I do have enough footage to make a video though.
A highlight of the trip was to see the Puffin birds. Really beautiful creatures that only pooped on me thrice. I managed to take some close up pictures with my 135mm lens and they came out great.
Time to cut another frame and do some experimenting
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Summer Super Sale!
A little late maybe but it’s finally time for a summer sale!
You will receive a discount of 5% if you place products with a value of $60 or more in your cart. The discount is automatically applied and you will be able to see how much you’ve saved at the bottom of the cart.
But it doesn’t end there! You will receive a 10% discount if you order for more than $160, 15% at $260 and a whopping 20% at $400!
A big thank you to all of you that have supported us by buying things from our store. Without you we wouldn’t be able to do what we love.
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The Faroe Islands
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New FPV video! –“Faroe Islands”
I wish I had gotten more footage before dumping the copter in the ocean, but hey I think this video turned out pretty good all things considered.
Enjoy!
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New improved Baby PDB REV3
Fresh from the oven, the Baby PDB REV3! It has improved current reading accuracy and an even cleaner BEC voltage output. Now comes in black instead of red. Set the current scale to 336 for the best results.
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New ESC – Aikon AK32, 35A, 6S, 32 bit
Time for an upgrade of ESC’s! The Aikon AK32 will now ship with all electronic packages and will be replacing the Aikon SEMF 30A ESC’s in the store.
A bleeding edge ESC running a 32 bit ST32F0 processor. Finally a ESC that uses hardware PWM control for a higher throttle resolution, smoother response and higher RPM ability. Features auto timing for higher efficiency and reliability, PWM frequency up to 48KHz, Voltage/Current limiting and ESC telemetry. It also has automatic detects if you’re running D-shot, OneShot, pwm or Multishot protocols.
Specifications:
Rated for 2S-6S
35A continuous, 45A burst
dimensions 30x18mm
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Recreating the Mythbusters rocket car
Since I have a big rocket now, why not strap it to a car and try and recreate the epic Mythbusters episodes with the JATO car?
Hope you enjoy it as much I did making it
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Black Friday Sale!
This sale is active November 24th until November 27th.
You will receive a discount of 5% if you place products with a value of $60 or more in your cart. The discount is automatically applied and you will be able to see how much you’ve saved at the bottom of the cart.
But it doesn’t end there! You will receive a 10% discount if you order for more than $160, 15% at $260 and a whopping 20% at $400!
A big thank you to all of you that have supported us by buying things from our store. Without you we wouldn’t be able to do what we love.
Update: Big thank you to everyone that bought something during the sale! It really means a lot to us.
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Rocket jump RC car
Remember the video where we recreated the Mythbusters rocket car with an RC car? If not it’s a couple of posts down.
But what if you don’t have a ramp when you want to jump over something? – It’s simple! Mount the rocket straight down!
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What features do you value most in Betaflight?
Lauka the wizard is currently working on implementing the Triflight improvements to Betaflight 3.2. The problem is that Betaflight 3.2 is so jam packed with stuff that it’s filling up the space on F1 and F3 processors.
In order to fit the Triflight stuff something has to go! So make your voice heard! Vote on which features you feel you need from Betaflight right now! Link to the poll here.
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