The mini remote. For years it has been touted as a great and reliable remote in noisy environments after shortcomings of remotes such as vx1 and many other and still makes lists as go-to remote for beginners. After a year of using Ive been less than impressed. Ive given this remote quite an optimism but after many recent accidents i thought I give my retrospect. I suggest everyone to chime in their experience both positive and negative so that maybe we can update existing information on weather this remote deserves itās throne. This thread is not attack personally on anyone who likes this remote. Iām not judging anyone who uses this remote daily. This is serious revisit to remote that is both loved and hated and I want to look into weather itās still safe to use for those who are just getting in this hobby or is it just me getting shit batch.
So what is this remote is a good question. Ive tried multiple times to find origin of this remote, yet my findings have fallen short. Couple of other friends of mine have tried and failed as well. It is unknown who manufactures it or what remote it tries to copy.
My research
- Manual and receiver
Remoteās receiver comes with a manual, however it talks about some mystical āā2.4Ghz remote with lcdāā, if anyone can shed a light on this it would be great. The channels themselves or their binding isnāt explained. Instead I found this random terrible chart on web. My tests with oscilloscope showed that channel 1 is connected to trigger, channel 2 is connected to steering, and channel 3 doesnāt provide anything. Maybe RC people here can explain what is āā300ohm resistor locking featureāā. Channel 4 also gives out nothing and is only there for binding. Receiver case however hints us that at some point channel 3 and 4 could also give out signal, but that feature has been removed/lost.
- Hardware
Opening it up gives us nothing much
A very sloppy job on crystal department, I guess factory ran out of properly sized crystal oscillators and took leftover 16mhz large onesā¦ The wires are terrible, hard to solder, 5 bends and they snap off. I replaced mine with propper stranded ones right away. Trigger obviously is potentiometer based.
Board department isnāt much better. Main MCU PN has been taken off as expected. I Havenāt bothered reverse engineering what chip it is, however if I have to guess, I would place my bets on some older PIC or attiny series / their china clones. From many remotes this one hasnāt been reverse engineered by many of the open RC protocol projects.
Regarding RF driver chip, itās A7105 a very archaic chip.
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RF
Iām hoping someone can chime in on this. If I have to guess, this remote achieves itās reliability by ether using high power levels or doing some other illegal RF shenanigans. However I have no equipment to test it. -
My experience with this remote
I have been using this remote for over a year in mostly city - suburban enviroment. Very RF noisy. This is torqueboards edition batch. I have been having random cutouts under different loads. At first I thought it was my vesc being silly. However after further tests I can say for certain that the remote is at fault. It will most certainly cutout if voltage starts dropping below ~2.2v. In cold weather it likes to drop out more. I still run stock setup with replaceable batteries and itās easy to tell when batteries are falling flat (you get cutouts even at 10km/h on flat surface). Remote works fine in common vx1 dropout spots in Riga. However it fails at others with very persistent cutouts but no total dropout.
The trigger while being controversial for being dangerous didnāt bothered me. However what did was very bad quality turn of slider switch that wouldnāt turn off sometimes and lack of dead mans switch.
Overall ergonomics are better than most remotes on market. However battery department is problematic. The plates that make contact with negative side of battery are very thin. I had an accident where after a cutout remote fell on ground. Battery weight managed to smash one of elastic plates totally flat and I had to manually bend it back for it to make contact with battery.
As for other local riders that donāt browse this forum, most had same experience: never hard throttle this remote, always be careful, bad on/off switch.
EDIT: When giving feedback please mention in what environment you are mostly using remote: Urban/Suburban/Countryside/Something else. It will make understanding itās performance lot more easier and objective.
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