How to:

[Dennis Jones]

Sorry Chris.

[Chris glover]

Sorry Chris.

Ha, I thought it was funny!

[Mick Regan]

Hi Dennis

I'm confused as well. As I said, it was 5 years ago that I first fitted the encoder, so I really couldn't remember wether the bridges were in or out. Chris removed his on Thomas's recommendation. That is what was causing his servo to hunt. As soon as the bridges were replaced, it all worked a treat.

Cheers

Mick

[Dennis Jones]

Ah I think I got the message wrong, he was told to open them but then closed them and that worked that makes sense now.

Dennis.

[JEAN MARC BELLETETE]

Just completed this mod on my Tiger Tank and must say it just work fine , better than the old toggle switch mode, at least with this you can select the sound much easely.
Thanks to all for the excellent explanations and photos.
I had a bit of confusion after I when to re-program the TBS5 but after reading the chapter on parametres setting the light came on due to the change to encoder instead of toggle switching.
Project completed.
JIMBO

[Dennis Jones]

Hi Jean,

Glad you got it sorted. Once you have done it about 50 times like I have it comes easy.

Dennis.

[JEAN MARC BELLETETE]

Thanks Dennis.

[bryanrmassie]

Hi Jean
I notice that you have a different rotary switch on the 7c after mod, where can you find these ?

Regards Bryan.

[JEAN MARC BELLETETE]

Hy Brian,
The photos you are referring is not mine, but that particular rotary switch is in fact the encoder and comes from Benedini and is available through his website www.Benedini.de.

[Stephen White]

Mick (and Dennis and Tim Page)

I'm about to fit Thomas' Rotary Encoder to the latest Spectrum Dx7 (the All Black one - seems topical). I've successfully used your brilliant guide for a Futaba in the past but before I open up the DX7, I'd like to know if there are any differences I need to watch out for. Any chance you could add your collective wisdom to this thread?

Apologies in advance if this has already been covered - I couldn't recall seeing anything and a search hasn't either.

All the best.

Stephen

[Tim Page]

Hi Stephen, sorry, i did promise to take some pix of mine.
I did open it up just before TankMod to enable the spring centering for my left stick which i use for elevation.

I will open it up again tonight and upload some pix.

Cheers
Tim

[Stephen White]

Thanks Tim, in advance.

The physical installation was dead easy:



It leaves the redundant three position and rotary switches:



On the main PCB, the rotary switch connects to A and the three way to B:



Is it a question of removing A and connecting the three way plug on the encoder? If so, a few questions:

- does polarity matter?
- what type of plug is A? (I'd like to make up a short jumper lead rather than cut cables so that I could restore the Tx if ever needed).
- what do I do about the redundant three way - just stow it and forget it, or disconnect it?

any help gratefully received from our electronics gurus. Thanks.

Stephen

[Dennis Jones]

Hi Stephen,

I just re-read your post and I hope you are using the encoder in place of a pot not a 3 way switch because if not it will not work.

I assume the 3 wires on plug A come from a pot that you have taken out. If so I would just unsolder the wires off the pot and join them to the wires to the encoder. It doesn't really matter about polarity but I would stick to white to orange, red to red and black to brown assuming of course that the white wire goes to the center of the pot and black and red to either side. I put my own switch and resistors in at a cost of about £5 which is slightly less than Benedini. I also assume that the 3 way switch you are talking about is just one that was in the hole which you just leave floating wrapped in pvc tape.

Dennis.

[Adrian Harris]

- does polarity matter?

Yes. There will be a positive supply, a ground and the signal connection. If they've any sense, the black will be ground, the red will be positive and the white will be signal. Unless Denny was involved in the design

Thomas seems to use orange for signal, red for positive and brown for ground. Did the encoder come with any instructions ?

- what type of plug is A? (I'd like to make up a short jumper lead rather than cut cables so that I could restore the Tx if ever needed).

Most of these types of plugs are JST (Japanese Solderless Connector). There are various families but I think those look like XH types.

The connectors are cheap but the crimp tool needed is eye-wateringly expensive.

- what do I do about the redundant three way - just stow it and forget it, or disconnect it?

Where do the left hand three wires go to on connector B ?

I would probably remove the middle three leads you are interested in from that plug and replace them with three newly crimped connections. If you remove the whole plug, you should be able to remove those pins by depressing a little springy tab on each one. That way the rest of it is not disturbed.

Cable tie the spare leads into a small snap seal bag to keep them from shorting anything out and cable tie the bag to something to stop it rattling around inside the transmitter.

Adrian

[Adrian Harris]

Like Dennis, I'm about to have a go with a DIY encoder, using surface mount resistors.

Adrian.