my Criccieth Castle. This is the control for forward / reverse and
speed all being on the same R/C channel.
I was going to live with it, but I find that 2 lever, control with left for
speed and right for forward and reverse, gives a much better driving
experience.
There are 2 ways that I could do this:-
Firstly, change the Loco Glide ESC for one (of my own design) which would
give control from 2 channels, this would be difficult to do as there is very little
spare space inside the body and would mean major changes to the loco.
Secondly, the preferred option as it is a completely reversible change to make,
is to intercept the speed and direction data from the R/C receiver, combine it with the
data from the throttle channel then process the data to reproduce the original data that
is sent to the ESC.
Sounds complicated, it is. The micro-controller that I used to switch the directional side
lights wasn’t up to the job as it only has 8 bit timers and to generate the signal for the ESC
I need 16 bits. So this afternoons job was to re-write the code for a different
micro-controller and to make up a small circuit board to mount in the same place as
the original one underneath the loco and next to the R/C receiver.
Then it was just a case of connecting it all up, switching it on and going through the
setup sequence for the Loco Glide ESC.
A test on the rolling road (2 blocks of wood) not only showed that all was working
perfectly but the throttle control was a lot better than I expected, giving much finer
control as well as a higher full speed. The real test will come tomorrow when I take
it for a proper test run on Bill Haywood’s track near to Market Drayton in Shropshire.
