Personal Projects

It looks really cool and it only took you all night to do it

1 Like

That’s because I improvised it, it wasn’t a great chassis to work on. Suffering from Lego fingers today, they’re quire sore. lol

1 Like

Quick update on Banshee. The parts came in today, so I replaced the ruined diff and idler, changed the tyres and decided to cover the underside of the truck in gorilla tape as a chassis protector.

Tomorrow will be the last run for a while as I continue to work on my dissertation. It will be a 4S run where I can hopefully finish the battery this time.

image

6 Likes

Looks cool! :star_struck:

1 Like

I want to see how the new tyres will perform, it’s the first time since the stock tyres that I’ll be running on tread and the first time I’ve taped the insides.

1 Like

Banshee PRR:

4S baseline run 2 / Capacity run 4:

I managed to get a good run this time, ran to the end of the charge with only one minor issue. The servo horn ballstud unscrewed itself from the servo horn and I had to screw it in by hand, it was a 3 min fix. I’ll tighten it down harder before the next run (I might even put a drop of superglue on the threads). Other than that, I had no issues, despite having several large crashes with a lot of tumbling and no breakages.

For this run I was running on fresh tyres that I also taped on the inside. The new tyres have a lot more grip than I expected, so much so that I’m going to have to lower the ride if I don’t want to flip over every time I chuck it into a bend. The braking is also greatly improved. The tape makes a huge difference, I can now afford to go faster in shorter distances without worrying about the tyres ballooning and unsettling the truck or even possibly exploding. As a result, the telemetry said I got to about 50 MPH this time, and although I did build up more speed than usual, I’d say it was closer to 45 MPH if I account for wheelspin and / or possible clutch slip. The only downside to the taped tyres is that they have a very slight imperfection in their shape, despite my efforts to apply the tape as well as I could. This doesn’t have an effect on the driving performance, but it does make camera footage a little shakier than normal, however, I have noticed that the gif maker seems to smooth the gifs out a bit for some reason.

Conditions were not bad this time around, cold and dry, good for the electronics and good for the tyres (despite the tyres being made to run in warmer weather). The ESC temperature stayed as I’d expect, but the motor was running surprisingly cool, I wasn’t running as hard as the last few runs, but I didn’t go too easy on it either. The motor maxed out at around 47C which is pretty much nothing considering that I’m running the motor past it’s specifications. To be honest, it’s nothing even if I run it within spec.

However, as before, the battery capacity curve was showing values that are way too high. I’ll try one last run with my old 6 cell, 4600 mAH NiMH that I’ve had since I got the truck. The battery has been used a lot and by now should be holding well under 4600 mAH of charge and it isn’t made by Overlander. So, if it too is reading well over what it is rated for, I’ll know that the telemetry is off on that reading. If it doesn’t, then there’s a chance that Overlander just grossly underrate their batteries (which means I’ve been getting great bargains and value for money). If the NiMH does give a correct reading I’ll do a bench-test on the LiPos with my discharge resistor to see what capacity I can roughly calculate.

Going back over all of the runs with telemetry data (not including the last run where I couldn’t finish the battery), there is an average error of about a +43% from what the battery claims. I don’t see the batteries being that badly rated from the manufacturers. I’d expect a ~+/-5% (~+/- 10% at the maximum) tolerance in the claim, not +43%.

I’ll try and squeeze the NiMH run in tomorrow if I have time, if I don’t, I can’t say exactly when I’ll be able to do it. The same goes for the bench-testing (if it comes to that), I don’t know when I’ll be able to do them.

Telemetry curves:

The odd gap in the middle of all of the curves is when I was fixing the servo horn.

All:
image

Power / Voltage / Current:
The power and current curves are almost identical.
image

ESC temperature: Motor temperature:
image

Capacity / Voltage:
image

Here are some gifs from the run, they include every crash.

This one carries on from the last one.

This is the highest speed I managed to get to today.

5 Likes

Niiiice gifs! :heart_eyes: too much crashes though… be careful!!!

Also you should bring with you a fast repairing kit!

1 Like

Like I’ve said before, compared to most R/C guys, I’m what you call a tame driver. Most of the crashes were grip flips since I haven’t gotten used to the new tyres.

With everything that can go wrong on the truck, I’ll end up lugging my entire toolbox. There’s very little that can go wrong on the truck and only be fixed in the field with a couple of tools. I’ve also noticed that apart from the rear left wheel nut, there isn’t one specific part that is consistently going wrong and even that one nut has been perfectly fine the past few runs.

1 Like

Ok,maybe just a screwdriver ? :grin:

Like I said, most problems can’t be fixed with just one or two tools.

1 Like

Sit-rep:

The NiMH run is a no-go, I was going to go for the run today, but the moment I switched the ESC on, all I heard was a faint dying beep of the ESC trying to arm. The battery is finally completely dead after all these years. I guess I’ll be doing those bench tests after all, I just don’t know when.

1 Like

Sharing this here… @framos1792 gave me the key of the Batcave and I couldn’t resist to go for a fly… :crazy_face: :joy: :joy:
:point_down:

70916

6 Likes

For a moment I thought that was your own design. :stuck_out_tongue: I want to see something original.

2 Likes

:grimacing: I’ll try… that one took me a while… because I didn’t have time to do it altogether… :sweat_smile:

1 Like

Update time I think. I haven’t forgotten about this thread, I’ve just been buried with uni work. Now that I’m finished with exams, I’ll be catching up with personal projects. So, expect activity to pick up in the next week or two. I’ll probably been doing the laptop improvement and resoration mentioned in the geek thread first, and then I’ll come back to the other projects.

6 Likes

So much for this. Those following the tech thread will know that I’ve been working on the old laptop. RC project work doesn’t look like it will be resuming for a while longer. There are a couple of reasons behind this. The first is that I’m finishing up one last uni project until the 21st. The second is the weather, it’s been chucking it down with rain this past week. Yes, Banshee is waterproof and can handle it just fine, but I want to get some dry baseline runs in for suspension testing. And of course the third reason is the laptop restoration and upgrade I’ve been doing.

On the topic of laptops, I’ve decided to consider both my XPS and the dv6000 as projects, this means that activity relating to them will likely move to this thread (I’m pretty sure everyone is fed up of me spamming the tech thread) and I might even dedicate an entire site branch / section to them (like the current R/C and Lego sections) depending on how much more I get into fiddling with PCs and laptops. This also means that I’ll be posting a project summary of the restoration in this thread soon as well.

Speaking of site sections, I’ve decided to cancel the stomping ground section I planned ages ago on account of having no time to work on it, and I don’t think I can execute it as well as I had initially thought. Maybe I can bring it back at some point in the future, but I’m not promising anything.

4 Likes

Project Lazarus:

Those of you who follow the tech thread will know all of this already, this is not meant for you, this is for people who don’t follow that thread.

Over the past month I’ve been restoring and upgrading my mum’s old HP Pavilion dv6000. To be honest I don’t actually know what the model is, on the screen bezel it says dv6000, on the bottom it says the product is dv6700 and the model says dv6907ea. I’ll keep it as dv6000 for simplicity.

This laptop has been in my family since around 2008 I think, it was our second ever laptop and we kept it around as an emergency backup in case our other devices had problems. After modifying my Dell XPS (another project that I’ll be posting about), I wanted to see what the old HP was like and if I could coax some life into it (hence the name). It wasn’t dead, just pretty slow.

Below are all the relevant posts from the tech thread.


ExpressCard slot discovery

Geek thread - Discuss IT stuff - #511 by the_termin8r


Project plan

Geek thread - Discuss IT stuff - #535 by the_termin8r


Laptop Restoration Log 1

Geek thread - Discuss IT stuff - #543 by the_termin8r


Laptop Restoration Log 2

Geek thread - Discuss IT stuff - #544 by the_termin8r


Laptop Restoration Log 3

Geek thread - Discuss IT stuff - #548 by the_termin8r


Laptop Restoration Log 4

Geek thread - Discuss IT stuff - #552 by the_termin8r


Laptop Restoration Log 5

Geek thread - Discuss IT stuff - #554 by the_termin8r


Laptop Restoration Log 6

Geek thread - Discuss IT stuff - #556 by the_termin8r


Laptop Restoration Log 7

Geek thread - Discuss IT stuff - #557 by the_termin8r


1 Like

@the_termin8r you probably need someone to clear your path.
So done.
I like reading your descriptions.
Even when I don’t understand half of it.
It aways sounds dedicated.
And be sure, if I feel the need to understand something, I will ask.
:hugs:

1 Like

Ah thanks.

Thanks. This thread contains all kinds of stuff, a lot of RC and Lego, and a lot of questions answered by me about a bunch of things. If you want to see it in a more organised place, the link to my site is in the OP.

You’re always welcome to.

1 Like

I’d have to take a closer look at all of these logs but it indeed seems like a very dedicated project. How many more parts are you going to replace or work on?

1 Like