Have you tried hooking up the timer to a servo and see it move with respect to the power settings? You would need a y extension cable in order to attach a 4.8V rc receiver battery to power the timer.

It does sound like the timer has issues, since it can power the motor on and off, so the pulses must be sent to the CC ESC.

This is the way I check out the JMP-2 timer settings (recommended by manufacturer) with my CC ESC. I think I have the latest firmware update in it.

Bob,
   You are the second person I have heard this from. Please send Sergio an e-mail explaining the situation. It sounds like some may have got shipped out with faulty programs.

Mike

Dean

You are right, most of the time no second set of beeps, but sometimes we did get some but with no difference. What is Sergio's email?

Bob Branch

I Have already written Sergio.
Back when I was a teenager, he lived and worked near my neighborhood. We flew together in the swamp maybe 6 or 7 miles due West of Manhattan.
Dean

just a question about the timer will there be a retract program incorporated as i am thinking of trying electric and this would be a cool and move weight inboard .
              thanking you Pete Beddows.

Version 2 and 3 of the Z-Tron timer have the ability to operate retracts.

Mike

Do not expect to fly in heli govenor mode with the Zigras. Castle Creations has changed their software and it currently does not work. Rich Sawicki and Sergio Zigras are working hard to solve it but as of this moment it is not there yet.

Bob Branch

Hi Gang,
I haven't gotten a good sense of closure on this issue.
Are folks getting their setups to work, once the throttle percentages are set correctly?

Dean P.

Mike,
Do you have the CC Beta version number that works? My CC ESC has recently been uploaded with the latest firmware as of a couple of weeks ago).
The reason I ask is that currently I am "JMP-2"-less!. I zapped my original one when I carelessly plugged it into the battery incorrectly during a programming attempt (zap!), and the JMP-2 I just bought doesn't work for some reason (not the same reason as the original, I put on my spectacles now before I plug in the timer!). I contacted the supplier and he tells me that JMP-2 is currently "not available", but it will be back in November, when my 2nd one can be fixed or replaced. I hope this is true since I like the JMP2.

However I still need a timer NOW, so I was thinking about buying a Zigras, since it is the only one I know that is available now and with a "reasonable" price (reasonable=my budget!). However I would like it to work with my controller.

I am even considering going Igor B's route and rolling my own, but I would like to get a flight or two on the new bird before the icy weather begins to close in on me. I have no idea how long it would take me to go make my own, but I have registered with the chip manufacturer so I could buy a few of that PIC controllers. The way I blew my JMP2 timer, maybe it would be a good idea to have a few more cheapie timers available. There is always the long winter to work on electronics. However $30 is a pretty good deal for the commercial timers I think.

Now on a completely different subject, do you think that Brodak might give us a little more info on his ESC so that I could at least attach another timer to it? I don't expect governor mode of course, but the original JMP-2 would have worked pretty nice with the ESC if only we knew how to talk to the ESC....

Mike,
I was thinking it might be easier to plug the Brodak timer on a scope, turn it on, and see what it does. Then try to do the same thing. If Igor's timer isn't too hard to make, then adapting it to the Brodak ESC might be the way to go. Of course the Brodak WSC could really be differerent, but isn't too hard for me to try.

I just had a couple of "great" ideas---I hooked up the Brodak timer to my JMP-2 servo setup. However I was surprised that the servo didn't budge. I am guessing the timer output isn't what I would call a "standard pulse width setup like a RC receiver gives-- and is equivalent to what a "normal" esc expects to see when hooked up to the throttle output of the receiver or a timer like the jmp2 or ztron.

Then I simply hooked at the Brodak timer output on the signal wire (the white wire on a Futaba servo lead) to a multimeter. I measured what looked like was just the dc battery voltage both before and after pushing the on button. So whatever the Brodak ESC/timer system is doing, it certainly doesn't look like an arming issue----darn!, I was hoping to have a simple setup for smaller CL planes. Maybe I will try to hook this up to a scope tomorrow at work and see what is actually going on. I did just verify that when I hooked up the Brodak timer to the Brodak ESC on the Super Clown, that the system was still working.

Program to my timer is free available, you want, I can make few PICs and send it to someone who can then sent further, but really, sending one chip to US is out of sence

connecting chip to connector is easy and shown on pictures.

And one hint for users of Jeti SPIN ESC - the prog box for ESC is able to show pulse width from any timer or servo tester and it is also servo tester itself, so it can be used to test any other ESC.

Getting back to the original thread (or at least close to it), I was able to borrow an AstroFlight Servo tester. I hooked it up to my CC ESC. I have my ESC setup in low governor mode. So on the bench, in order to get to the 9500 to 10k rpm level on my Scorpion 3020-10 motor (nominally similar to the AXI 2820 family), I need to input a ~1.36 ms pulse width from the servo tester. This represents, I think, about a 36 % throttle setting.

So what I am saying, is that the low throttle setting is a "feature" of the ESC firmware, not the Ztron. So I worry that since the throttle settings are discrete on the digital timers like the JMP-2 and Ztron, that the rpm jump between adjacent "clicks" will be too coarse to get a good throttle setting.