operating a plastic model of a Atlas 5ton crane by a 2.4GHz radio control set

Wrigley

Active member
This circuit made on through hole stripboard houses 2 picaxe 18M2 controlling 4 L293D driving linear motors, steppers and a mini servo. More details are on each of the two programs attached along with a pdf the block diagram and circuit diagram.

I have yet to finally finish, paint and semi-fit the crane to the decking of a model tug boat that I'm building and no doubt there will be some tweaking at the end.
It is not waterproof so only very calm water.
I wanted to see if I could indeed get the picaxe to read the 1 to 2mS pulses every 20mS that appear from the receiver outputs. I achieved this and should work on most radio control kits although with some small changes to the pulsout values. I happen to be using my Futaba.

The steppers are only 8mm in diameter and I attached them to a 2.5mm threaded rod via a rubber sleeve. The rod passed through a semi fixed nut on the small Arm 2 and the pivot sections. The wires are very tiny indeed to solder. The main arm Arm 1 and main moving body parts are a bit larger but still caused design and build problems - basically very fiddly.
The crane is made from plastic so not that strong.
I spent many hours trying to get it to work until I tried using suspend and resume which gave sections of program a chance to operate without interruptions. I actually wrote an automatic program that carried out lifting, rotating, extending actions which worked no problem but when I added it to this manual mode it didn't work well even with suspend etc so I removed it.
As it's one of my first posts I welcome comments of any improvement to layout, descriptions, coding etc I could make.
Oh the Steppers are bipolar 2 phase 4 wire drawing about 165 - 165mA and I didn't fit resistors.
 

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Wrigley

Active member
hi tmfkam
I'll send two replys due to memory size. one shows the tx, rx connected to picaxe pcb.
As you can see it's very prototypish and needs to be completed. The static yellow crane is what the supplier shows and mine has some small mods to accommodate the electrics.
 

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