Cruiser133

OK, so I decided to take a risk and stray from my Tamiya happy home and try the IBU2 for my T55A. I had a Clark board which appears to be DOA. It was brand new and never worked, so I will never buy that product again. I get the IBU in and hooked up per the manual and I get nothing but a MG sound when I attempt to start the tank. I set up the radio about a dozen times with no luck. I have tried my DX6I and Futaba T4YF radios, still no joy. At least with the Futaba the sticks appear to be correct as the MG sound on the DX6I is reversed to the right stick no matter what I do. I can only get the MG sound when I pull the left stick back and cannon sound when I push it forward on my Futaba. I have not hooked up turret rotation, lights, recoil or elevation. Does everything need to be hooked up before the board will work? I am quite frustrated at the moment as I am used to my Tamiya electronics working right off the bat. I don't care they are dated, THEY WORK!!!! I have wasted hours on this!

Crius

I had trouble like that once with an IBU myself and I found that sometimes even though the manual says start tank is up and to the right it will really be down and to the right or perhaps up and to the left. If I were you, I would set the tank up on blocks, just in case, and try all four corner stick positions for at least six seconds each and see if it starts in any of those positions.

Crius

And if this helps, I have found that of the four corner positions, lights, smoke, momentum and engine start, usually momentum and smoke will be on either left or right and headlights and tank start will be on the other side. Did that make any sense? So if momentum is up and to the left then smoke will be down and to the left and if headlights are down and to the right then engine start will be up and to the right. At least that's been my experience with the boards that I have.

tomhugill

Have you got the sticks setup tamiya or henglong style? It's hard to tell without the rotation plugged in. My advise would be connect the rotation, if rotation and gunfire and mg are on the same stick then engine on is move the stick past the mg position and the use turret left or right for 5 seconds till the engine starts. Using your spekrum tx you can swap the plugs in the receiver to get the functions on the sticks you want: a little trial and error but you'll get there.

are you getting a turret rotation sound at all?

Cruiser133

I will hook everything up and see where I am, anybody know why I am just getting MG and cannon sound and nothing else?

tomhugill

Have you tried the other stick to see if you get sounds? If your getting the sounds you're getting the boards on and receiving signals, it should just be a matter of figuring what channels go where. If you move the stick that triggers the cannon and mg very slowly up or down do you get an elevation sound?

Imex-Erik

First, check your receiver and make sure each channel is working correctly by itself when commanded (no mixes). Then when you get everything hooked up, do a radio calibration on the IBU board The IBU might not be seeing the endpoints of your TX and not starting up. Make sure you have the channels in the correct order too. You may have two channels incorrectly plugged in and it will not start because it is reading the wrong channel combination to start.

Cruiser133

What do you mean correct order? I have my RX hooked up correctly and when I switch up the channels it doesn't seem to matter as nothing changes. The on board green light blinks constant, it is never solid even after setting up the radio

Cruiser133

Frankly it is a PIA, I really don't see the advantage. I may just throw in a Tamiya set and sell this....

Cruiser133

I have moved both sticks in all directions to get it started and still nothing.

tomhugill

Did you get rotation or elevation sounds doing what I recommended?

superrod

My Feedback: (16)

Sounds like the board was not fully hooked up and the dip switches set. This needs to be done first then the board needs to be set to the receiver with dip switch 8. This will teach the board the end points for the radio. Since it needs to see end points in the start up process I bet this is the part that is missing.
Jimmy

Crius

Jimmy's right about those endpoints. With my i10 and the IBU, even after using dip switch 8 to calibrate the sticks, I still have to apply a slight bit of trim to get the engine to start properly but that's just one board and I have about six of them the rest of them all work great.

Cruiser133

Thanks Guys for the help, sorry I am so frustrated and venting towards the wrong folks.

Crius

If you can't vent to your fellow crazies that share your hobby, who can you vent to? So vent away, my friend, we understand.

Cruiser133

No elevation sound, I get a MG sound when I move the right stick strait to the bottom and bottom left and right corners. I get cannon sound when I move the right stick strait up and both upper corners. THIS IS ALL I GET, no matter what radio I put in....

tomhugill

Did you get a chance to hook up the elevation and rotation?

Crius

Have you calibrated the sticks using dip switch 8? Sometimes that doesn't take the first time. It can be a little touchy about the order in which you do things. I found that it works best if you have both tank and transmitter on and then switch dip switch 8, move the sticks slowly to all positions, put 8 back to where it was, turn off the tank, turn off the TX, turn the TX back on, turn the tank back on and see what happens. If you were getting machine gun sound in lower right and left Corners then your sticks are not calibrated properly.

TheBennyB

I'd imagine you'd want all your trims to neutral and endpoints to 100% before you do the calibration with dip switch 8?

Cruiser133

What I don't understand is according to the manual, the cannon and MG sounds should be on the LEFT stick. I know my Futaba 4YF is mode 2 as I JUST tested it and the RX on my Tamiya Leo 2 and it worked flawlessly. According to the video Erik at Imex posted on Youtube, I shouldn't have to hook up anything beside power, speaker, RX and volume to get the thing started and calibrated. I am really adverse to hacking up my wire harness to hook up additional components if it doesn't make a difference as I am about 85% sure this board is getting Sh1t canned.

Imex-Erik

Ok so have you tried these steps yet? I'm sorry if we are asking a few times

• Hook a servo up to each individual channel on your TX to confirm each channel is working correctly and assigned to the correct output?
• Hook up a servo to yaw (turret rotation) and see if it moves when you move the pitch or roll axis as well as the throttle. If the servo moves when the other axis are applied then you have a plane mix you need to remove. Some radios come factory with a mix installed or a mix is applied when you choose the template for a model.
• Have you connected the receiver outputs like this: Ch1=throttle (pitch), Ch2= steering (roll), Ch3= elevation/fire (throttle), and Ch4= turret rotation (yaw)? The output of the TX channel needs to be matched correctly to the input on the IBU. (if you do not connect the inputs correctly you usually get a fail to start issue like you are now)

So to make sure that 3rd bullet is done correctly you can do this.... First connect a servo to a channel on your RX and find if it is Pitch/Roll/Throttle/Yaw and then connect that to the input channel on the IBU.
Example: You connect a servo to output CH1 on your RX and your throttle stick controls the servo. Unplug the servo and connect your servo cable from CH1 output on your RX to Ch3 on the IBU input. Repeat this for all 4 channels. After this you should be able to start the tank with a combination of throttle and yaw input. You may have to reverse your channels to match the IBU as well. The normal startup is throttle down and yaw right, but if it is something like throttle down and yaw left then you need to reverse the Yaw channel. If it is something like throttle up and yaw left then you will need to reverse two channels.
Hopefully that helps! If it still doesn't work after this I would suggest contacting IBU directly or checking out the manual for it here: http://www.ibu-electronics.com/doc/IBU2_manual_V5_0.pdf as IBU is really good with customer service

Crius

Ian Judge is the new North American distributor for IBU products but he's not an RCU member so I sent him an email and a link to this thread to see if he had any ideas. Here is his response.

Just briefly scanned the post.


Could be a faulty servo lead meaning the IBU2 isn't getter a channel signal.


Once got turret and gun channels should be able to engine. But sounds like it's missing the turret channel and hence only the gun and machine gun sounding.


Also if battery settings are wrong or battery is flat engine won't start. I know sounds obvious but that has caught me out a few times!


I had problems with bad servo cables once myself, and I know if you have it set for lipo and run nimh it can act funny.

tomhugill

I've had dodgy servo leads catch me out before, sounds like a good thing to try.

Cruiser133

OK, so the frustration continues! I used a servo to confirm the channels on my RX. Using the servo, I KNOW my channels are correct. I have IBU channel 1 to RX thro, IBU channel 2 to RX Aile, IBU channel 3 to RX elev, and IBU channel 4 to RX rudd. I am using a Spektrum AR6110 receiver. When I hook up a servo to the servo recoil option on the IBU, it works as intended. For example, I pull back on the elevator stick on my TX and the recoil servo engages and the speaker emits the cannon boom. Being this is a standard board, I don't have the other options for servo turret traverse or barrel elevation. When I hook up the turret traverse motor on the HL turret port, I get nothing. I do get the elevation sound of the barrel, cannon boom and MG and that is it!

Why in the world am I having this issue???

Cruiser133

Forgot to add, I also hooked up the gearboxes. When I used a 3 way splitter to hook up the IBU, servo and RX to IBU channel 1, the tracks engaged in reverse and did not stop until I cut the power.