Busted receiver channel?

[skatj]

I have successfully integrated r/c control with my Basic Stamp, but just recently my channel 1 on the receiver does not work. It displays a pulse value of 0 and does not move the servos when directly hooked to them.

My question is, what causes a bad receiver channel and is there any way to fix it?

To my knowledge, I have not done any bad wiring, and voltages do not exceed 5 volts anywhere across the system.

[kd7ost]

Did you work inside the receiver? If so, what did you have to do?

Dan

[skatj]

Nope, the only thing I did was cut off the red/black wires in the servo extension cable, plugged one end into the receiver, and connected the other end to an I/O pin on my Stamp.

[kd7ost]

You have to keep a common ground between all the gear. Including the stamp. I presume you're powering the stamp from a different source. The ground between the receiver and the stamp ground must be connected. (That black wire) This way the stamp can reference the pulse it's getting to the outside gear.

Dan

[skatj]

I am powering the Stamp and the receiver with the same source. The receiver is powered via channel 5 through one of the Board of Education servo ports (not sure if you're familiar with that, but it's just a serial I/O, ground, and 5v power supply).

The servos are powered separately but they are not directly connected to the receiver.

[kd7ost]

I have an early version BOE but am not at home to look at the documentation. It still sounds like a wiring issue though if the receiver channel 1 works without the Stamp but doesn't work when it's connected. Maybe a code issue. I'll try to look later when I get home. It will be at least a few days.

Dan

[kd7ost]

Somehow I got a little lost in this. For some reason I was thinking that the receiver worked when you plugged a servo into it. I re-read your description before getting started and see that it sounds like you must have taken out the port on channel one in your receiver. (Post 1, duh, sorry about that).

Anyway, it sounds like you must have loaded that channel in trying to connect things up and took out the output of whatever chip is used to sort your receiver pulses. You can try to track that back and solder in a new chip or replace the receiver. Many modern receivers use surface mount parts and it can be a little tricky to replace those. But if all your other channels are good, I would say it must be that chip or any component used to buffer the output from the chip outputs to the servos.

Best of luck.

Dan