Hello, All. Happy New Year! I have the Mikrokopter LANC board for controlling the Sony CX760. I have connected it up to the camera and the Flight Control board as per the instructions. But once again, I am stymied by the connection to switches on my Graupner mx20. What I'd like to do is connect up CTRL7 to the zoom function and Switch 2 for RECORD. I am having a mental block about how to do this, and there's no instructions on the Wiki. I'm running a 2-axis gimbal and the 3-pos switch on the right is controlling the Radians. Thanks in advance! BTW, my Radians are amazing. Here's a peek at the maiden voyage!
Hi Steve: Did you see this: http://www.mikrokopter.de/ucwiki/en/LancCtrl If you did and you've still got questions, let me know and I'll walk you through it. Andy.
Hi, Andy. I've looked through the instructions, and I always get confused about the mapping of an mx 20 channels and switches to the micro copter tool channels and POTIs It's just a mental block that I have. I think what I'd like to do is use a dial control for the zoom, and a 2 position switch for start/stop video. I don't need to take still pictures with this camera, and I can't, anyway, in the modes I am shooting in. You are a prince among men. Thank you!
Hi Steve Let me see if I can remove the block and create a workable mental model for you. Here's the complete syllogism: MX-20 Sticks/Switches/Controls are assigned to "Inputs" on the MX-20 on the Control Adjust screen of the MX-20. (Sidebar: Unless you really want to re-map them, Inputs can be thought of as channels. The MX-20 can, if you really want to, can be made to remap Inputs further on to channels, but the default is that inputs are isomorphic to channels.) The channels are transmitted to the receiver. The receiver communicates the control signals on each channel to the MK Flight Control board. (See MK Tools/Channels window). The MK FC board allows the channels to be remapped to POTI's. The POTIs can be used to change values in MK Tools. (Hint: if in MK Tool the value has a single down arrow to the right of it, then you can either give it a numeric value or control it by specifying a POTI which in turn was mapped back to a channel (MK Tool/Channels) which in turns was mapped to a stick/switch/control by the Controls Adjust on the MX20). A couple of values are only specified by their channel number. e.g. Motor Safety Switch. Why? Dunno. Independent of the above, ignoring POTIs etc., you can always plug a servo cable into the GR-24 receiver (or whatever you're using) and pull off the PPM signal for the channel you connect to. So, if you want to use channel 9 to control something, plug a servo cable into channel 9 and connect it to the thingy you want to control. For the MK LANC some of what I said (about POTIs) above is irrelevant, but I couldn't help myself! So the steps are: 1. Select an unused channel. For example, 9. (This is an hypothetical -- pick a different one if you are already using 9). 2. Map the Control to channel 9 in the MX-20 Control Adjust window. 3. Run a servo cable from the GR24 Channel 9 over to the MK LANC controller. 4. Channel 9 will now control whichever input you plugged it into on the MK LANC controller. I believe the MK LANC controller requires two servo inputs, so repeat steps 1. to 4. for channel, say, 10. Hope this helps. Andy.
Geez, I hope that was one big cut and paste, or else I'm also going to have to name my next dog (or goldfish) "Andy", too. Will be home shortly and I'll give it a go. Thank you!
Nah. I wrote it de novo. I type fast -- it comes from programming for, cough, a few decades.... Andy (the alleged human, not the goldfish).
Hi Steve, I got a bit confused also with the chanel configuration on the Lanc. I belive the CTRL is preconfigured to x chanels and I dont know how to change that. What I ended up doing is looking at the function and the chanel that its preconfigured to, lets say Zoom is in chanel 12 but chanel 12 is on switch 6 or whatever..If you go to Control Adjust in your MX 20 you can see the Imputs(chanels) and the correspondant switch.Now go on to the switch part on the desired chanel and press set, it will ask you to move the desired switch and it will log in. Also make sure that you return the potentiometers no neutral position in the Zoom cause if not you can burn out the function on the Ctrl, this hapens most often returning Zoom to 0 and leaving the potentiometer on.
As I recall, the LANC Control isn't configured to any specific channel -- it has two PWM inputs, so it's up to you which one you plug into which channel on the receiver -- you have to experiment and, when you discover that you've got them switch around (as inevitably happens to me), then you just swap the plugs over. But you most certainly (as I think you are saying Alex) have to configure the MX-20 to "map" the appropriate controls to the appropriate channels. Andy.
Yep, there you go Andy. I didn t quite understand that so I did it old school hahha!! Thanks for clearing it up tho! Alex.