Emy

Emy

Tuesday 6 April 2010

R6: Major Electronics upgrade




Posted by PicasaI have been very busy over the last few weeks getting the R6 ready for a local show. After doing a few more test runs up and down the drive I felt that the 12v system was lacking somewhat and I really needed to updgrade the power system to 24v. The motors are already rated at 24v so the only real cost would be beafing up the wiring a bit, which was something I was going to do anyway and rewiring the battery systems. I also decided to get two new 18 Ah batteries. I am currently running four 4.5Ah batteries in parrallel on the 12v system but moving over to 24v would only give me 9Ah, not really enough.
Both my batteries are still independant and setup to be charged as 12v units. When plugged in through my power/charge system, they provide 24 and 12v respectively to the circuits. The 24v feed goes to the ESC number one which in turn feeds the main motors. ESC number two gets 12v to power the dome. The main power board also gets 12v to power everything else, lights and sound system. When the computer and projector are fitted they will also be powered from this 12v feed. I have kept with fuses as opposed to breakers as I prefer them plus I have loads.
The wiring has been upgraded to heavier gauge where the loads will be greater. You can see in the top picture that I was using brown 15 amp wire which has now been replaced with 30A red cable. The motor cables from the ESC, yellow.green wires, are rated at 20A so should be fine. The neutral wiring to both ESC has also been increased in size to 30A Black cable. I still think I may need an independent BEC to power the servos as I have problems getting enough power to them when only powering up one of the ESC, but at the moment everything seems to work fine.
The 24v power to the drive adds so much torque it is great and I can now really spin the R6 around and climb inclines much better. I have set the DX6i radio to smooth out and reduce the sensitivity to the controls so the R6 is not to twitchy  with its new power.
Next bit of electronics to add will be the RF switching unit soon to arrive from ebay. I went for the 12 channel unit so I would have enough channels when I add a few more features to the R6. To start with this will replace the servo switch controlling the head radar and switch the dome and feet lights. 

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