[RC Tractor Guy]

Welcome to the forum. I’m definitely interesting in your excavator experience, I’m usually watching peoples videos trying to figure out how they built their models since they’re mostly German like you say.

[Nathan.Mescher]

Hello Everyone
I am Nathan and live in Ohio in the U.S. and I’m 16. I love what you do RC Tractor Guy and I’m starting my first tractor. A 370 CVT Case IH Magnum. Im excited to start getting my parts to start. Thank You for your help!!

[modelleicher]

Hello everybody,

I guess I introduce myself here, too. I found “The RC Tractor Guy” on Youtube about 2 month ago while I was looking for videos on how to implement the NRF24 module. It was like “oh, wow, this guy did exactly what I want to do, great!” as i did not think that anybody had yet used the NRF modules in 1:32 RC models yet. Well, then i watched a lot of the videos, wrote a few comments and eventually endet up here in the forum.

Enough as to how i found this forum, now a bit about my past RC experience.

I got the first Siku Control tractor (a John Deere 6920S) two weeks after it was released. I was 12 years at the time. Already having Siku and Tractors as my Hobby all my life I couldn’t wait for the Siku IR release after I first heard of it. Since it was a christmas gift I had to wait an additional 6 weeks until I finally got it.. (although my parents let me do a test drive the day they bought it) So obviously i couldn’t wait and the days after christmas the tractor only stopped to recharge the battery.

Well, over the next 2-3 years I got a few more Siku Control.. And I started to modify them. And eventually taking the electronics and putting them into different tractors. Sadly, all of this failed. The first one (a Eicher, hence my name, created back then and stuck) did hold up for a while. But i wanted to make it better, changing things.. Eventually i had resoldered probably about 50% of the wires and it just was a huge mess.
The second one didn’t even last a few days, as I was getting sick and tired of resoldering broken off wires.
(No idea how other people did it, back in the day many used the entire Siku electronics and put them into all kinds of vehicles.. )

Anyways, the RC hobby was kinda dead for me then. But then the Agrotron X720 came out and I got that one. I enjoyed it quite a bit and swore to myself never ever to even do as much as open the baseplate of the model to have a look.. I also got the Lanz Eilbulldog, just because I love old tractors and it is cute.

All that aside, i was really interested in the IR technologie. Compared to usual RC it was extremly easy, just a few parts and no radio frequency stuff.. So i read a lot on the internet, and pretty soon developed the dream to create my own RC Controller with IR or at least create a receiver for the Siku Controller. I also learned about Microcontroller.. But I had no knowledge about electronics at all, nobody to ask.. And no idea youtube was a thing. (Although I think 2008ish there weren’t many tutorials on youtube) Also, i didn’t know of Arduino (did it even exist?) so all i saw was complicated programmers, programs.. Pics and Atmel chips, ISP programmers for a lot of money.. So i never got around to try it.

I was reading about electronics from time to time, but i didn’t understand much and not doing anything myself, just reading, I forgot most of the stuff right away. Finally, i found out about Picaxe. And after reading a lot about them i got me one. Now I was cooking with gas and the DIY IR RC Controller was in arm’s reach.. in theory at least.
I did a few blink projects with the Picaxe, but as soon as i tried to do IR stuff i failed. I didn’t know enough about it.. Also, i didn’t know any english so i couldn’t even look for tutorials. (German youtube at the time didn’t have much in terms of electronics).

Things changed once my cousin gave me an arduino. I heard of them before, but where I was reading people were making fun of them. “Beginners stuff” so I believed that. Also, i didn’t know about Clones from China, and 30€ was just a lot of money. Also, there is no way to fit an Arduino Uno into a tractor. Anyways, as i had that thing know I needed to find some projects.. So I read and watched youtube videos.. By that time I did understand quite a bit of english already, and it opened up a whole new world. Now that I actually did a few projects I started to understand electronics and how they work. I also finally got how Radio Control over IR worked. Now I was determined to find out how the Siku Control IR Protocol worked.. So i got a Logic Analyzer, and analyzed it.

After a lot of testing i had it all, just not the checksum. I just could not figure out how it was calculated. I tried to use the receiver without a checksum, but i kept getting so many wrong values and interference that it just was not possible. Servos kept jumping around.. Then I did smooth the values per software, which did work. But if I smooth too much the reaction is just too slow, and if I did not enough, it just was jumping around.. So no real solution.
Anyways, i actually found a old video of that..

But, back from the past to the present. I got NRF modules about two years ago. I never did anything with them since I was too lazy to look for a library at the time and then just forgot. So whilest going about digitizing some Märklin Train with Arduino I came across my NRF modules. And somehow I was now determined to use them.. And that is how I found the RC Tractor Guy channel. To my surprise he also reverse engineered the Siku Control Protocol, and he got the checksum math. So I implemented his calculation into my receiver, and it worked! Sadly, I still got weird values and jumping.. The IR stuff just isn’t that precise.
Now I was even more determined to make use of the NRF modules.

After failing a lot, I got the modules working about two weeks ago. I built myself a bare basics controller, and it worked. The last two days I spent putting together the receiver in a test tractor.. And just an hour ago I did the first test drive. I had a smile across my face, a big smile!
Finally, after years of thinking about it I had built my own RC Controller and Receiver.

Why all of this you might ask?
First of all, the Siku Controller is limited in functions. Second, if I use the Siku Receiver it only can use Siku Servos, which suck. Luckily, some people were way faster decoding the protocol so there are pre-programmed Microcontrollers to use as Siku IR receivers out there. Most people for the past few years used those instead of using the original Siku electronics.
Still, one of those is 35€, a lot of money. And there we are at the third reason.. I was sure that it is way cheaper to built them myself. If I just have to spend half the money building a tractor I can build twice as many.. which is awesome, of course 😀

Anyways.. Now you all know a lot about my past experiences with RC tractors. Things I might want to add to that, I’m from germany, besides RC tractors I like real tractors and vintage tractors, I also have a bit of a passion for certain cars. I love programming and i love electronics.. naturally, i love Arduino. Also, once I start writing a post, it usually gets quite long.. Sorry about that..

Regards,
Samu / modelleicher

[RC Tractor Guy]

Welcome to the forum guys. That was an interesting read modelleicher, you clearly know what you are doing in this hobby and have tons of experience.

[grasslover]

Hi Guys,

My name is Paul, I am a 65 year old ‘boy’ from Somerset, UK, still fascinated with r/c models of all kinds but particularly tractors. My love of them started when my family lived in Leigh, Dorset, UK. Our house was situated in the corner of a field and in the early 60’s I used to watch a beautiful little Fordson Dexter tractor pulling a Massey Ferguson baler, with a bale sleigh behind. Happy Days.

Listen, I have only just acquired my very first (used) r/c tractor, which is a 1/16 scale ERTL John Deere 9420. I appreciate this site concentrates on 1/32 scale, but I wanted to ask members if anyone has any idea’s of how to remove the wheels on this excellent tractor? I have an intermittent r/c receiver problem where the tractor just stops for no apparent reason, but when tapped, goes again. I guess I have a loose connection inside, and I want to check everything is okay in there. To do this I need to remove the front set of double wheels before I can get to the screws securing the two halves of the body together. Any idea’s? There is what appears to be a black plastic cap on each wheel centre, under which I suspect is a locknut, but I cannot see how to remove this cap w/o causing damage to it. Any advice, help would be appreciated.

Also, if anyone is interested, I have been in touch with Tomy, who now look after ERTL model matters, and after enquiring, they have kindly sent me circuit diagrams of the r/c transmitter and receiver, amazing! If anyone wants a copy, just email me.

That’s it guys and gals, brilliant site, very interesting.

Paul

[rcnewbie]

Hi all,

My name is Jasper and from the Netherlands.
I’m a newbie in RC, but really interested in starting with RC (especially Arduino, experienced in that). My “goal” is to build a RC tractor in a way it can be expanded in time (e.g. mower, tank wagon)
As said, I’m a total newbie, so I’ll be posting lot of questions (my apologies for that!)

Looking forward to share with you all

/Jasper

[tractorbuilder2205]

Hi all, my name is Bailey, Im twelve years old and I live in New Zealand.I am building the John Deere 8360RT. I have a couple of problems but will post them in the appropriate section in the forum.

Cheers Bailey

[zneb]

`Hello to all, My Name is Gary and being brought up on a farm your site is very Interesting. My first tractor that I drove was a fordson pulling a wagon and Hay loader on back with My uncle making the load. I have built 2 tractors with 3 D printer and need to get them operating. I;ve tried to load your basic controller code and keep getting error exit status 1. I’ve tried to write code but getting to old to remember everything. I guess what I’m trying to say is I need some help. Thanks for your site and an opportunity for help.GH

[Author]

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