Wireless remote control car. Motors turn on upon connecting batteries to the circuit (Reciver), while remote controller (Transmitter) turned off (Not connected any batteries).

Not a slightest clue of what to do in this situation, any help would be greatly appreciated.

 

Not a slightest clue of what to do in this situation.

You could post the question on an electronics forum, along with a clear description of how it is connected, preferably a schematic diagram, and part numbers of all the relevant components.

 

The answer is: Never turn on the receiver until the transmitter is powered on and stable. If you ignore this, you may damage the motor controller.

 

A more elaborate scheme will be to not enable any of the active states of the control outputs until the receiver detects the control signal carrier. "Carrier Detect" is a fairly common receiver function, so information should be available. BUT not on the cartoon channel.

 

BUT not on the cartoon channel.

Bill, you may not be a YouTube viewer because you clearly don’t know what is actually there. There are surely misleading, incorrect, and fraudulent videos to be found, but the amount of truly useful, interesting, and very well made content is amazing.

You are painting with a brush so broad you are getting it all over yourself as well. You are simply wrong about whether YouTube is a good resource—it’s a superb one.

Does the viewer need to vet the source if they don’t have enough information to judge the content’s veracity? Yes. But this is true to greater and lesser extents for every information source.

Please stop making blanket statements about YouTube as if it has no value. It’s particularly good for neophytes and if people read your messages constantly disparaging all YouTube content, they will certainly be mislead into thinking just being on YouTube is enough to condemn any video that might otherwise be extremely useful to them.

I started a thread a couple of years ago* to list recommended YouTube resources—there are several there but it should be updated and expanded. You can look there to see that being on YouTube doesn’t ruin content, you might find something you are interested in—or not.
*It would be really great if people could review and add to the list currently there.

You may not need or want any content YouTube creators offer, but there is a great deal that others would find extremely useful and with your reputation as a genuine electronics expert, the constant condemnation of YouTube as completely without merit is damaging.

Please consider doing a little research so you can speak with some expertise instead of simple prejudice.

 

OK, I am indeed put off by the faked demonstrations of impossible results. And that is what I see is folks asking why their results do not match what they see happening in the video. So when one sees enough of that it does indeed give an impression that the venue has an issue. And does the management do anything about it??? It does not seem that they do.

 

OK, I am indeed put off by the faked demonstrations of impossible results. And that is what I see is folks asking why their results do not match what they see happening in the video. So when one sees enough of that it does indeed give an impression that the venue has an issue. And does the management do anything about it??? It does not seem that they do.

YouTube doesn’t police content unless it is in direct violation of their rules. I doubt they have anyone qualified to determine the veracity of the “amazing invention” videos. Nonetheless the good far outstrips that sort of content.

 

For the TS, really, if they have information about the receiver circuits, adding a carrier detection function should not be that difficult, WHAT MAY BE A CHALLENGE is altering the default condition of the output system devices.

So a logical question becomes what is the radio control system? Is there any information available??

 

If it's run from a nano as the title seems to suggest then it's a matter of figuring out what the program is doing that it shouldn't be doing, or not doing that it should be doing. Since it works right after the transceiver connects I'm guessing it's a matter of not configuring pins at startup as they should be, but instead after the connection is made. Maybe some missing pull down resistors also (I've burned up some FETs that way in a spectacular fashion)

 

If the nano is actually generating the control operation then the initializing routine needs to set all of the outputs to the level that keeps all the power off until a command is received. BUT I would not expect that advice from an organization that calls a program listing a "sketch." It is a software problem that needs to be solved in software, (aka program listing)

 

BUT I would not expect that advice from an organization that calls a program listing a "sketch.

Bill, my friend, you are genuinely expert at so many things—and your insights and advice on those things is admirable.

Why do you insist on editorializing about things you don’t know. The terminology “sketch” is a legacy of Arduino’s origin. It was intended to reduce the intimidation a neophyte, who was often a highly credentialed person in their own field, felt when approached the cliff face of what had been the learning curve facing anyone who wanted to learn embedded programming.

Well, it turns out that “the organization that called “programs”, “sketches” managed to literally change the world. Today, the programmers who write the libraries for the myriad modules that make the Arduino ecosystem incredibly powerful are often among the very best. And even early on those writing the libraries and example code were not the neophytes they were writing them for.

Please consider seriously the idea of getting an Arduino starter kit and trying out the environment so you can get an idea of how much of the arcane make-work of embedding programming, compiling, and EEPROM burning is eliminated by it and just why it did change the world.

If you speak from knowledge and experience—as you otherwise unfailingly do—I am sure you will have something to say that is worth listening to. But this snide name-calling and dismissal stuff is just annoying and looks so bad.

 

When I first got interested in radio controlled models, more than 60 years ago, I very quickly learned the basic rule: If you don't want to cause any damage, don't energize the receiver before the transmitter. After all these years I still have the scars on my hand that made me aware of this rule.
Electronic systems have become much more sophisticated since the days of tube circuits and large primary batteries, but self preservation by using basic, common sense safety procedures has not changed. I can not think of any situation where it is necessary to turn on the receiving equipment before the transmitter.

 

Even if the Arduino is providing all the signals to operate the unit there will be an amount of time between turning on and configuration to account for. While it may be too short to really do any damage appropriate pull up / down resistors should be added to prevent any possibility of it happening in the first place.

If for some reason the controller fails to run, is held in reset, or a mistake in the program leads to the initialization not happening then we are back at square one.

While turning on the transceiver first is good advice for radio controlled units in the world of microcontroller based remote control it may not actually do any good. Radio controls are generally different than say a Bluetooth or WiFi connection where you actually have to "connect" to the device in order to communicate with it.

 

If you have a situation where there is a delay between the system being powered on and the output being controlled, the simple way to handle it is to put a manual safety switch in the motor circuit. Then the motor can not be accidentally activated before full control is established.

 

Once again, I have two suggestions. The first one is to add a "carrier detect " output to the receiver, and use that to enable activation of the outputs. That should be simple to add to the software, and not so very challenging for the receiver.
If you can provide us with the circuit of the receiver than I am sure we can provide the design of a carrier detection addition.
The second suggestion is to redesign the various drivers so that until they receive both the actual command instruction, and also an "enable" signal that only happens after getting a signal from the transmitter. This might be a bit tedious, though.

 

It would be extremely nice to get some feedback from the TS so we actually know something instead of making a bunch of random suggestions.

 

The answer is: Never turn on the receiver until the transmitter is powered on and stable. If you ignore this, you may damage the motor controller.

Changed sketch to Basic led blink. Motors has stopped moving. Is it programing error?

 

Changed sketch to Basic led blink. Motors has stopped moving. Is it programing error?

Welcome to AAC.

As you can see, many members are ready to help you but they can’t unless you provide enough information—and you haven’t.

We need:

1. a BoM (Bill of Materials)—that is, a parts list of at least the major components with part numbers
2. a schematic, or at least a clear wiring diagram
3. the code, in [CODE] tags, which is best done using the Code option in the menu, in the toolbar of the post editor.

It sounds like one of only a few things but guessing at which it could be is a waste of time. With sufficient information, guessing won’t be necessary.

 

If the nano is actually generating the control operation then the initializing routine needs to set all of the outputs to the level that keeps all the power off until a command is received. BUT I would not expect that advice from an organization that calls a program listing a "sketch." It is a software problem that needs to be solved in software, (aka program listing)

Hi there,

Each project has it's own code and so it depends on how the 'inventor' programmed the Arduino. If you started with a raw Arduino I would bet this doesn't happen, although many of them are loaded with a 'Blink' program when they are first programmed so that may be an issue. The Blink program is just to give newcomers a place to start.
If the Arduino came with a complete program for something else or was loaded with a new 'sketch' then the sketch would dictate what was going to happen from the moment of turn on until it was turned off, and that includes any kind of inputs. If the inputs are not what they should be there is always the chance of some sort of failure.

 

Changed sketch to Basic led blink. Motors has stopped moving. Is it programing error?

It is almost certain it is that the 'sketch' was not written exactly right. You'd have to go over that in detail or post it here so someone might be able to help.
Different people from different walks of life write sketches and their proficiency varies all the way from beginner to expert. What they took into account can also vary quite a bit. One person's sketch could be very different from another's.