Hi guys, Today I was about to test my MARC robot driving capabilities, so I turned on everything (Sabertooth and laser 4 reciever) and I had no responce from my reciever. I checked the battery and it was full (just recharged it!), but my onboard battery tester wasnāt showing any LED or indication of power, so I opened up the board, applied power and tested the voltage on grd pin and positive pin, power seemed to be good. After a couple minutes of fiddling around I was able to get the board to work. So i plugged in the MC ch1 and ch2 wires, servo wires (for a pan tilt) and applied the battery. All of a sudden I got an incredible amount of blue smoke, and shut off the power.
My servo wires were completely metlted off the wire, as was the battery harness I made to accomadate to attach the battery to the reciever (the 7.2v one evo gave to me in a trade a while back).
Now I am to wonder what happened! I plugged everything in correctly, Iāve had the reciever and Laser 4 for two years now and never had a problem up until now. I need to know what caused this and where can I get a replacement reciever (just the reciever not the controller.)
The board looks brandnew showing no signs of damage, so pictures areānt neccessary. the only thing vissually damaged were all the wires, the sabertooth was not hurt (thank god!).
I unplugged everything since all the wires had melted completely off the copper. I donāt know what really happened. Like I said, at first the board wasnt working, than after fiddling with it it began to work. But as soon as I plugged something into the CH1 and turned on the power, POOOF!
The power plug from your battery was placed on the wrong pins or backwards.
Most R/C receivers donāt like more than 6 volts at 1 or 2 amps.
Sabertooth was sending power to the receiver in opposite (+ and -) configuration than the battery pack.
Iāve plugged a battery into the negative and signal pins before by accident and it cooked my receiver.
Iāve also cooked receivers by applying 7.2Volts to them. In reality, receivers are designed to handle 4.8V at 2 or 3 amps. Most handle 6V fine. But if you run 6 loaded servos off a receiver at 6 volts, their is a good chance it will smoke.
Iāve had one smoke with 3 ESCās attached to it, which is no load. No BECS and a 7.2 Volt battery to the receiver running 2 servos.
Sorry to hear that. But it must be a wiring mixup or 7.2V was just too much for the receiver. If the wires actually melted I would guess it would have to be a mixed up wire somewhere. It sounds like the 7.2Volts shorted out from a backwards hook up which would melt servo wires almost instantly.
A servo plugged in backwards canāt smoke anything. The servo has power on the right pin, but the signal (yellow wire) from the servo is shorted to ground, which wonāt hurt anything. The receivers signal output is connected to the servos ground, but this will not damage anything either. This is assuming all of the servos have no electrical connection to anything else on the roverā¦ No āYā adapters or external pots etc.
If you reverse power going to the receiver then you can melt wires going to the servos. Servos are likely toast along with the receiver.
I donāt carry the receiver by itself, so Iām no help.
Sorry to hear the bad news. Blue smoke is so badā¦
yes thats why I power my reciever with a seperate pack. BTW, its not brocken after all. I disconnected the reciever from everything and after letting it sit for about an hour, i plugged in a 6v pack on ch8 and a servo on ch1, no smoke and I was able to control the servo with my controller.
My geuss is that two wires shorted out on each other where I had heatshrink (must have melted through) and melted all the wires which caused the smoke.
