Wild Thumper Controller - Packaged Software has Issues

If you are trying to used the Dagu motor controller with their Wild Thumper vehicle, which is great, but can't get it to respond properly to a RC tranmitter, make the following changes to the software. Get off D0 and D1 and move to D9 and D10, which are PWM channels. You don't want a PWM repetative pulses (every 22ms from a Spektrum transmitter) to clobber your serial interface when loading programs. This is why you get a sync error from the compiler if you follow the manual. Now you have to comment out the places in the code where D9 and D10 are defined as servo outputs (in variables and setup() area). Then the controller works fine. I used the airleon for L/R and elevator for F/B. This way when you let go of the control, the vehicle stops. If you're moving forward (or in reverse) an airlion right or left turns the vehicle. For a really quick reaction, just leave the elevator in neutral and kick the aileon control directly. One motor goes forward and other in reverse and you spin. A word of caution - switch off the vehicle power before turning off your recv/trans or you could send the vehicle off running out of control. Another point. If you want to see the serial monitor outputs, just change the Cmode to 0 in the "Initialize I/O pins" segment. I would also change the Brate value to 9600 in the Constants.h file so the Arduino isn't using so much horsepower just spitting out simple lines of info that you will probably want to cease once you've looked at it (go back to Cmode = 1). This info is important to see, once, because you will probably notice the motors are not balanced in power usage. Run the cal shown in the manual to get the same response from the right side motors as the leftside motors and your driving experience will be greatly enhanced. [Using the serial interface to run the vehicle is insane anyway, because the slow reaction time of typing in commands - please!]

Using D0 and D1

Ref OddBot:  I hear what your your saying and I couldn’t see why it would make a difference which open digital inputs you used, but this was the only arrangement that worked on my controller, plus having the Tx/Rx open for program uploads is nice since plugging and unplugging those servo cables from a receiver is a pain. At any rate, it works now, so I’m leaving it alone.

Once I got the controller working in a lab config - separate pwr supply and two smaller DC motors, etc. I placed everything in the vehicle and was shocked to see how much juice those six motors take! I had to install the battery pack I built, because the lab supply crowbarred on current. Once connected, all runs well. The pack is six 3.7v LiPo arranged in two rows of three that are in series providing 7.4v at 7800mAh. ( Yes, I use an offboard charger that does three at a time.)

There is also a audopilot module on the vehicle that has several servo outputs, so aux equip isn’t an issue. I will eventually have the ardupilot run the show and the Dago controller. With video, it should be a run ride.