yes, you need a 12 volt power supply (13.8 is better)
you can use a PC power supply with some mods, or you can get some good ones off ebay.
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Valen: what mods would we have to do to a PSU to get 13V outputs?
TDT: is the triton still up for sale? If it is we would be interested in buying it.

Thanks, Chris
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Yeah, triton is still for sale mate. I'll dig one of them out tonight/tomorrow and make sure it all works (I haven't used it since I bought an iCharger)
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you cant mod a PC power supply to do that easily.
You just need to do things to get them to turn on, then load the 5 volt rail to keep the 12v line at 12 volts.

Take a look on ebay, there are some 12 and 13.8 volt 400W power supplies that a bunch of us got. They seem to work pretty well, you just need to put them into another case because they have live wires exposed otherwise (240v)
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One of my friends had an old PC that he was throwing out, soo i took the power supply. is anyone able to give me a step-by-step guide as to how i can mod it to only output 12V?

Chris
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Would this be the right way of modding a computer PSU Wikihow ?

yeah but its a bit of a worry opening it up.
That be 240v powah in there.

best off leaving it closed.

Simple way of getting 12 volts is to stick a wire between any black wire and the green wire on the ATX plug, that will make it turn on.

use a multi-meter to work out which is the 5 and 12v in the "molex" plugs (red or yellow measured against black)

on the 5v line put like a 10 watt car light bulb or so. more is fine(like 20W), less might be a little too low. A blinker is probably best.


Best bet is to get 2x molex plugs to match the ones on the power supply and then add some wires.

I just put a molex plug on my charger directly so it could plug into the pc power supply without it looking too hacked up.
Then make another with the light bulb. (light bulb is just a cheap way of getting a big resistor ;->)
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Dusted off and tested
PM your address.

I do the same thing as Valen does with the PC power suppliers, means you can take em back for warranty too if you blow it up
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I got the charger and PSU to work, just need some banana plugs and some more deans plugs and work out how to bind the HobbyCity radio gear and I'll be set.
Found an old Speaker set tonight with a seperate wall plug which says an output of 15V, 1100mA. Would this be alright for the Triton? The company site has a max output of 15V for it, and im just thinking that a 45cm^3 unit would be much easier to move around then a Massive PSU with wires hanging out everywhere.

Chris

1.1amp isn't enough for the Triton and 15v is in the upper limits of the unit, best off keeping it around 12-13v. Aim for a power supply with 12v @ 12amps or more.
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With the HobbyKing Radios, what channels are for what stick? I've got the right stick centring, with the left on 'locking' up and down. I'm pretty sure I've tried all the channels, but i might have now only just binded it properly.

1 and 2 are the driving channels 3 is the ratcheting up and down and 4 is the side to side on the ratcheting side.

theres a little red led thatll come on inside the reciever when its getting power so check that, otherwise yeah might need a rebind (they do come bound in tho)

oh and the negative points away from the reciever

Got the radio binded, and everythings working. We were testing it out with a 9.6V pack and when ever we turn, the red error light flashes on the Sabretooth. Also after about 15sec or so of running the whole thing recentres, and is stuck in a near full forward/reverse/left/right that no changing of the trims fixes it. Has anyone had thins problem, or could it be one of: needing more voltage/ampage to run 4 motors, the sabretooth is having difficulty running 4 motors, somethings broken or loose when it shouldnt be?

sabtertooth is not designed for 4 drill motors. it didn't even power 2 drills at full power with a twack-bot doing the spin (see robowars vids verse battleshed last year where it was powered by the ibc)

as to the getting stuck that in my testing happen when you drained more current from the bec then it could suply and that causes issues on your 5v line.
the bec can provide a maximum of 10ma or something (slightly more at your voltage i think but not enough to avoid the issues) like that. that can hardly power a standard fm receiver. a specturm receiver needs 10x+ that much power i have not tested the hobby king but i suspect it would be at least 6x more then what the bec is rated at.
an external bec may be needed.

i found that twice it got stuck even after it had an external bec so i started feeding the becs power back into the 5v line but i would only do that with a constant 5v suply and only if needed. I think the manual showed something like that which is why i did it.


I never had the error light on my sabertooth however so you may have a slightly diferent issue. not sure.


EDIT after Angus's post. http://dimensionengineering.com/datasheets/Sabertoothdipwizard/start.htm is good to make sure the dip switches are correct.
The heatsink issue angus mentioned i cant see how it happens but strange things happen at times (if you wish to sit the heatsink on metal to be safe might be worth using heaps of thermal transfer paste. the non conductive stuff i prefer to put mine in plastic boxes however). At one stage at robowars an issue of it going uncontrollable was blamed on the heatsink becoming grounded (the ground lead just touching the heatsink.) I suspect that was not the real issue and it was again issues on the 5v line.

Nice link angus far cheaper then the dimension engineering stuff. (btw i use prity much the same thing as angus but from DE for a BEC)
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Last edited by seanet1310 on Sat Mar 14, 2009 9:27 am; edited 2 times in total

I only recently got one of these things. They're pretty cheap but yeah thank;s to Seans experience you can get them to run ok.
You 100% will need a bec I use one of these from ledsales that works fine (just don't plug it in backward...).
http://www.ledsales.com.au/cart.php?target=product&product_id=227&category_id=49
Double check your DIP switches because they're pretty small and you might have made a mistake setting them to the right rc mode.
Last point I havn't experienced yet is don't let the heatsink touch anything metal on your frame, aparently it goes haywire... erm.. good luck.
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