More Mato IR Emitter Issues

[glocke12]

This is getting kind of nuts. I have a Mato Stug III and M36 Jackson I have not used since before the New Year.

I charged them up and was running them around the house and noticed ranging issues with these, meaning they didn't register hits on one another unless they were within a few feet of one another. This was not the case when I used this in December.

For the M36 Jackson, I was thinking since it was fairly easy to swap out the IR emitter on the M4 Sherman I have, this would be an equally simple task. Wrong. I started that last night and found that disassembly of that proved to be more complex than the M4 Sherman, and not only could I not get the IR emitter and flash emitter removed the cannon barrel, they also had ended up splicing the positive wires of those two emitters together prior to shoving them down the cannon barrel ( not that big of a deal but I find it kind of odd ). I am thinking once I get the cannon barrel out using either a heat gun to melt the adhesive or pouring some rubbing alcohol down there will loosen things up.

As a side note, after starting, and than stopping and putting it back together last night I noticed that the IR emitter seemed to have some kind of haze on it so put some rubbing alcohol on a Q-Tip and was able to get the haze removed and the emitter seemed to function better last night but when I just tried it now it was not so it definitely needs to be replaced.

My question(s) on this is, how often have people noticed IR emitters failing ? This is the third tank I've had this happen on from them in the space of a year and these things do not get run that often. Second question is, has anyone here dissembled a Mato M36 Jackson ?

Now, for the Stug III, this had no issues the last time I used this in December ( except for arriving to me with the IR emitter painted over by Mato ), but this one also had ranging issues. Hits on opposing tanks only registered when the other tank was a few feet away whereas in December hits were registered from up to 30-40 feet away. When I looked at the emitter on this tank with my iPhone camera, it pretty much appeared to be in an " always on " state, meaning the purple light from the emitter was apparent as soon as the tank was turned on and did not change in intensity when the cannon was fired, although hits on opposing tanks were only registered when the cannon was fired. Does anyone have any idea what would cause the emitter to appear to be in an " always on " state ? I am still learning about this stuff so I have no clue if thats some kind of failure in the emitter, a possible issue with the clark board, or is just the nature of some of these emitters.

Cross posted this on RCtankwarfare also, and will be checking both sites for replies so no need to reply to the threads in both locations.

[tank_me]

Does your M36 have a Clark board in it and if it does, is the IR LED plugged into port J1 or J3? It's supposed to go in port J1 (pink arrow) and it should be the only device connected to that port. It should be on it's own circuit with both the positive and negative feed coming from J1. If I get what you are saying, your IR LED is sharing power with another LED? If so, that may be the issue. The IR LED is typically overvolted when it's fired in order to get more range. At least that's how the Tamiya standard works. If you use your phone you can point it at the IR LED and see it firing. If the flash is very brief, it may be connected to the cannon flash circuit. The IR LED should "pulse" and not just flash. When I say pulse I mean it should come on and stay on for like 1.5 seconds. That pulse time is what ensures it makes a solid hit on another tank. If there is no pulse it won't register hits. I ran into a situation like this with the Open Panzer TCB and troubleshot it with the designer of that board, Luke.

[glocke12]

thanks...

Ugh. lol.

So ended up getting the IR emitter sorted out, and after getting everything put back together ended up having issues with the cannon recoil. It basically ended up in a " loop " , retracting back and forth. Nothing I was doing fixed it and I should have stopped and took a break but didn't.

Gist of it is I thought a reset of the fleshy 10 channel controller might help so thats what I did, followed by rebinding to the receiver in the tank.

Now nothing works. The tank is bound to the receiver but once I turn the tank on all it does is go through and play the sound effects, and once ended up moving on its on.

I am guessing I need to go through a re-programming process of the controller or something ????

Moral here is stop working when you are getting tired and frustrated.

[SoCalBobS]

I tried a TK board once and had the same frustrations as you. Now I'm a Heng Long fanboy. Easy to work with, unless you want something it doesn't do like tank specific sounds.

[glocke12]

I tried a TK board once and had the same frustrations as you. Now I'm a Heng Long fanboy. Easy to work with, unless you want something it doesn't do like tank specific sounds.

hmmmmm....

Theres definitely a learning curve here. My hopes of this being a plug and play hobby are dashed forever.

In any case, I got the controller figured out as I stated above ( channels simply needed to be reassigned), but there are still issues with the cannon.

When it pivots upwards and that plastic arm rotates down, the cannon barrel will start moving back and forth and for the life of me I can't figure out why. There isn't any wiring that I can see jammed up that would cause this and the servo thats causing that movement is the cannon recoil servo, not the horizontal/vertical servo.

here is a video:

https://share.icloud.com/photos/0d4ia4cY0EsYdwjAzNQU6mUOA

[Tang - RC.Senshado]

It's got a steep curve and you have to be very good about following the steps and knowing how each item and programming works or you're in for a bad time. Probably one of the most difficult systems to include for someone to try and diagnose it if they bought it in RTR form. Gotta start from the beginning first before you can start fiddling with the settings.

- First, do you know what Clark board it has? You mentioned you have a 10 channel setup which would change the setup process because the submenus are different.
- And do you own a universal sony remote of the type needed to access the Clark programming?
- And to what level did you "reset" the system. Did you clear out the functions on your radio or did you do a factory reset on the board itself?

[quitcherbitchen]

When it pivots upwards and that plastic arm rotates down, the cannon barrel will start moving back and forth and for the life of me I can't figure out why. There isn't any wiring that I can see jammed up that would cause this and the servo thats causing that movement is the cannon recoil servo, not the horizontal/vertical servo.

here is a video:

https://share.icloud.com/photos/0d4i...YdwjAzNQU6mUOA

I suspect your programming issue is with how the clark board needs to go to page two "-/--" of the programming chart to change the elevation servo to servo pwm not ESC.Press the button one "1" twice Carefully read the clark programming chart on how to get to page two and then cycle thru the settings to land on the one you want. Clark boards need to cycle to make sure they settle on the one you want. In other words, go past the one you want until you land on it again then stop and unplug. Then wait 10 seconds to plug the power back on without the programming pin in. I have lots of experience with clark boards and have experienced what your board is doing. You can burn out the servos in ESC setting if you play with it too much in that mode. Take the servo elevation off when programming. Plug it in once you think you have it correct. Remember negative wire to the outside of the board when putting it back in. TK 22 and TK 40 boards are junk compared to the TK 50. I have never had a problem with a tk 50, 60 or 80.

[tank_me]

TK 22 and TK 40 boards are junk compared to the TK 50. I have never had a problem with a tk 50, 60 or 80.

I wish my luck was as good as yours. I have two TK50s with no sound. Used to have sound...now no sound. Swap a new board into the tank...has sound. Need to send them in for repair one of these days.

[glocke12]

It's got a steep curve and you have to be very good about following the steps and knowing how each item and programming works or you're in for a bad time. Probably one of the most difficult systems to include for someone to try and diagnose it if they bought it in RTR form. Gotta start from the beginning first before you can start fiddling with the settings.

- First, do you know what Clark board it has? You mentioned you have a 10 channel setup which would change the setup process because the submenus are different.
- And do you own a universal sony remote of the type needed to access the Clark programming?
- And to what level did you "reset" the system. Did you clear out the functions on your radio or did you do a factory reset on the board itself?

It has a TK50S board.

I do not have the remote, I don't think I need it now but will order, I am just not sure what cable I need for it.

The reset was only done on the flysky controller, that turns out to have been an easy fix. I only had to reassign the channels on the controller so now that part of this is mess back to normal.




" Probably one of the most difficult systems to include for someone to try and diagnose it if they bought it in RTR form"

I may just use that as a signature line on this site lol.

It's ironic that I bought these in RTR form because I really don't care for tinkering or putting things like models together. It's not that I can't do those things, I just prefer not to unless I absolutely have to but now it appears I need to learn all I can about these because no one is coming to my rescue on this lol.

[glocke12]

I suspect your programming issue is with how the clark board needs to go to page two "-/--" of the programming chart to change the elevation servo to servo pwm not ESC.Press the button one "1" twice Carefully read the clark programming chart on how to get to page two and then cycle thru the settings to land on the one you want. Clark boards need to cycle to make sure they settle on the one you want. In other words, go past the one you want until you land on it again then stop and unplug. Then wait 10 seconds to plug the power back on without the programming pin in. I have lots of experience with clark boards and have experienced what your board is doing. You can burn out the servos in ESC setting if you play with it too much in that mode. Take the servo elevation off when programming. Plug it in once you think you have it correct. Remember negative wire to the outside of the board when putting it back in. TK 22 and TK 40 boards are junk compared to the TK 50. I have never had a problem with a tk 50, 60 or 80.

I honestly don't think it's a programming issue because it turns out the only thing I affected with the reset was the flysky controller which I resolved. I don't have the IR programming remote anyway so theres no way I could messed up the board thankfully.

I think the issue is with that plastic servo arm and metal linker. They either need to be aligned in a certain way that I haven't figured out, or there is something else going on with them I don't understand or notice ( its possible that metal linker arm may have lost a bend but I am not 100% on that ).

[Tang - RC.Senshado]

I honestly don't think it's a programming issue because it turns out the only thing I affected with the reset was the flysky controller which I resolved. I don't have the IR programming remote anyway so theres no way I could messed up the board thankfully.

I think the issue is with that plastic servo arm and metal linker. They either need to be aligned in a certain way that I haven't figured out, or there is something else going on with them I don't understand or notice ( its possible that metal linker arm may have lost a bend but I am not 100% on that ).

They occasionally can glitch out and some settings revert or change to other settings, not by your doing. Don't rule out that the board could have defaulted to another setting on its own, even without you touching it. This is why I asked. It's a thing that can happen with these. Very rarely but I've had it happen and then I've had to factory reset the board and then change the settings to what I need, otherwise I would be inducing more problems trying to change settings over and over. It's commonly advised to reset it if you have the slightest suspicion for the best experience, and I can say this is true. I own I think a dozen tanks with them and have experience on the TK22/TK40/TK50/TK60 in addition to other systems. They just aren't bullet proof.

The elevation may have been kicked over to another mode instead of servo mode as others have mentioned. It's not a bullet proof system and you shouldn't own the Clark board without the remote to program it. If you took the linkage off the servo, you might have to double check the timing (position) of the servo horn it the rested/neutral position and adjust from there.

[glocke12]

They occasionally can glitch out and some settings revert or change to other settings, not by your doing. Don't rule out that the board could have defaulted to another setting on its own, even without you touching it. This is why I asked. It's a thing that can happen with these. Very rarely but I've had it happen and then I've had to factory reset the board and then change the settings to what I need, otherwise I would be inducing more problems trying to change settings over and over. It's commonly advised to reset it if you have the slightest suspicion for the best experience, and I can say this is true. I own I think a dozen tanks with them and have experience on the TK22/TK40/TK50/TK60 in addition to other systems. They just aren't bullet proof.

The elevation may have been kicked over to another mode instead of servo mode as others have mentioned. It's not a bullet proof system and you shouldn't own the Clark board without the remote to program it. If you took the linkage off the servo, you might have to double check the timing (position) of the servo horn it the rested/neutral position and adjust from there.

I just ordered the programming remote and infrared programming cable from DAKRC. Hopefully it is just glitchy.

I don't think I ever took the linkage off of the servo, but honestly I had this thing pulled apart so many times this weekend I just didn't remember if I did or not. Unfortunately there are no index markings on the servo/servo arm so I have no clue what the neutral position of the servo arm should be. I assume that upon startup the servo goes to its rested position and the arm should be extending out straight/perpendicular from there. Thats what looks like what is happening on an unmolested tank I have here anyway. I ended up popping the servo arm off, giving power to the servo to get it into the neutral position than put the arm back on so it was perpendicular to the horizontal axis of the servo unit.

After doing that and putting everything back together, things were still glitchy but less so...The cannon still reciprocates once the elevation servo reaches the upwards or downwards limits. It is bizarre because like I said earlier, it will do that when only the elevation servo is plugged in. Without the recoil servo plugged in I'd think there would be no way for that servo to move at all.

In any case, we'll see what happens when the remote gets here. If that doesn't end up fixing this issue than I am just at a total loss as to what to do with this.

To make all this even better I also ended up having an extra screw left over after getting it back together. No clue where that came from because all the locations that required a machine screw have them in there.

[quitcherbitchen]

After doing that and putting everything back together, things were still glitchy but less so...The cannon still reciprocates once the elevation servo reaches the upwards or downwards limits. It is bizarre because like I said earlier, it will do that when only the elevation servo is plugged in.

I

Like I mentioned before and Tang has supported.. It sounds like a classic case of the Board program going into a default setting of the elevation servo circuit going back to ESC mode and not PWM. I have had servos just glitch back and forth or cycle till they overheat and burn out because the board defaulted to ESC which in electronic terms means it is just a power supply which no longer transmits signal to the servo. Just powers it. Yours is slightly unusual in that it only happens when the servo reaches it's limits but it wont hurt to get a programmer remote and try to set the correct settings. The TK boards are Hobby level controllers. The Heng Long 7.1 units are really good and more plug and play without much to be done. As your tank is already set up for Clark you would have to rewire a lot of things to make the Heng long unit fit. I would say try and learn the Clark and once fixed you can hang that diploma on your wall even though you never signed up for the course LOL.

Also, ask Bob about the extra screw LOL