I looked at the ‘How to’ section. There doesn’t seem to be any option to add to a post, or comment on it. Neither can you post videos, so it doesn’t look too promising.
I think I might just post in the general forum, with a topic title that makes it a bit easier to find when searching. Want to post a few different examples of using the Vape atomiser in different ways.
Didn’t get to the lake yesterday to get a new video. I was all charged up and ready to go, but the weather turned cold (5 C), windy and wet by mid-day. Not ideal for standing out by the lake.
Going to try and get a better video of the boat on the lake later today. If I do, I’ll post that. I agree, finding things on this site can be difficult. I was wondering about posting my smoker in a separate blog on ‘how to make a smoker’, but the ‘how to’ area might be a better option.
Terrible news from White Island this week. We visited it some years ago. The crossing from the mainland was quite rough, I was OK but my wife was terribly sick both ways. I remember that more than the island itself.
I agree. My first impression of his exhaust ports was that they are very nicely made, but sort of miss the point. That’s why I commented that I was looking forward to seeing them working😉.
I’ve built a new controller for the smoker, but not had time to try it out yet. Hopefully later today. If it works as expected I might post something about it.
I’ve often found it difficult to locate posts a second time. The search engine seems very limited.
That video was posted as a comment to an earlier blog post. I think that’s why it is difficult to find. I’m hoping I’ll have some better videos by the weekend so I’ll post those maybe as a media post. However getting the videos does depend on the weather, which isn’t looking too good.
Regards Graham93
I did wonder about exhaust flaps, but as far as I know, the Crash Tenders didn’t have them fitted. I also noticed this week that on my boat, the exhaust ports are under water when the boat is stationary 🙄. You can see it in the video. Think I might need to sort out the weight distribution and move a few things forward. I still have a few things to fit in the boat yet, If I’m not careful, it might become a model submarine 🤣.
Thinking about the reversing problem, you could set the TX up for normal operation, and then fit a servo reverser in the cable before the smoke ESC. That way the drive ESC would be driven normally, and the smoke esc in reverse.
I’m trying to make things on the boat as simple as possible to operate. Despite that, by the time I’ve finished I’ll be using all 10 channels on the Tx and won’t have enough fingers to control it all at once, and take photos etc!
My control unit currently runs with the smoke coil full on, the water pump on slow, and the air pump pulsing. I can probably arrange for the smoke coil power to be inversely linked to throttle setting, which would do away with the need for a separate ESC. Or perhaps it would be a good idea to have the smoke running just for ‘engine startup’, I.e. for a few seconds, and then leave the water pulsing without smoke once the engine is running. That should keep me busy trying to write some software to achieve that.😁
Going to the model boat show tomorrow, so who knows what ideas I might come back with, not to mention bits and pieces.
That’s interesting. So if I understand correctly, you are reducing the coil power as you increase the throttle. I haven’t tried that. I did try pulsing the coil with the same pulsed power feed as the air pump, but found it didn’t work well, the coil wasn’t getting hot enough to produce much smoke.
Yes, I recon you can just reverse the motor connections to cope with the reversed channel and it should work OK with both ESCs on the same channel.
I found that trials on the lake are different to in the workshop, so the settings need to be different. I think the pumps need to work faster in the model than they do on the bench. Trouble is, I can’t easily adjust that on the lakeside with my current build, so I’m planning to put together a new control board that will allow easy adjustment of the smoke pulsing and pump speeds. Already had one expression of interest. Didn’t really want to get back into manufacturing 🙄
Graham93
Replaced the simple 'T' I was using to mix the smoke stream and water with one based on the attached sketch. It works much better. I'm getting more smoke, and I'm not getting water flowing back into the smoker and flooding it. The water tube is thin walled 6mm o/d, 0.45mm wall. The smoke tube is 3mm o/d and about 0.5mm wall copper tube. I bent it be hand and it distorted a little so the cross section must be quite small. Might have another go at making a better version of this. The video I just posted has the coil running at 3.5v. It probably needs turning down a bit, certainly in the workshop! Current drain is around 1A off a 7.4V supply.
I like the trapdoor idea 😉 I think that works because you have cotton wool in the tank which will slow down the liquid flow into the coil. There is no wool in my tank and I think having it open will just flood the coil. If I have time, I'll try that tomorrow to see what happens.
I've been thinking about switching so that it only operates on startup and idle. I think I could put something together to switch it automatically based on throttle setting. So it would run on idle, and accelerate with throttle setting until the throttle is at, maybe 40%, when it would turn off. Similarly, it would turn back on when the throttle drops below say 10%. That would save having to use another channel on the R/C.
Happy to put some electronics together for you eventually if you would like. Need to wait until it settles down a bit though as it is all a bit too fluid at present.
John, the video looks good. It must be using more power than mine, as I get very little heating. Switching the coil would help keep it cool at the expense of less smoke.
I’ve got mine working reasonably this morning so I might post a video later. Getting too much smoke in the workshop, but it will probably be OK on the lake.
