Mamba X issue

[mewalsh100]

Hey All -

I've been trying to get the Mamba X in my Rock Bouncer rig dialed in. Opened up Castle Link and played around with settings. Problem is, it seems like no matter what I do with Brake and Drag Brake settings, as soon as I go throttle neutral it goes HARD stop. Like ass over tea kettle hard stop. Right now, I've got brake force set to "custom" 0, and I dropped drag brake to 40%. Makes absolutely zero difference. I can go drag brake 100% and brake force 60% and it acts the exact same way. Any suggestions? Really thinking I should have gotten another Holmes BLE at this point.

[robert@castle]

If the ESC has "Reverse Type" set to "Crawler Reverse", the "Brake Amount" setting is not used at all and never has any affect on the drag brake. I've heard of some people using 5-8% drag brake depending on their motor and their gearing. In our older firmwares it always applies 100% of the value at neutral throttle. In version 2.02 and newer the drag brake is used while driving the motor while the throttle is under 25% but will apply fully when you go to neutral. If you are careful with the throttle you can get it to slow down without flipping the truck.

To fully fix the issue, download the newest version of Castle Link from our website(3.78.00) and upgrade your firmware to firmware version 2.06. We just added a setting for "Drag Brake Ramp" that will apply the drag brake over time depending on your setting. The setting is the last setting in the 'Basic' tab.

[HumboldtEF]

What motor? Is it super low gearing?

Have you tried something crazy low like 10% or 5% drag brake. My Revolver needed to be at 5% for me to be happy, at first I tried 75%, 50%, 40% and they all seem the same strength as its drag brake is super strong.

[mewalsh100]

Robert@castle - thanks for the info. I will update my software and firmware and give it a go.

[mewalsh100]

Originally Posted by HumboldtEF

What motor? Is it super low gearing?

Have you tried something crazy low like 10% or 5% drag brake. My Revolver needed to be at 5% for me to be happy, at first I tried 75%, 50%, 40% and they all seem the same strength as its drag brake is super strong.

It's the new Revolver I just put in. That said, it did the same thing with the old PullerPro. I think Robert from Castle shed some light on it.

[robert@castle]

Originally Posted by mewalsh100

It's the new Revolver I just put in. That said, it did the same thing with the old PullerPro. I think Robert from Castle shed some light on it.

Yeah the revolver has a ton of drag brake. You might watch JRH's video review of the Sidewinder 4. I think he said he was running like 4-5% drag brake.

[Voodoobrew]

Wwhat do you have the aux wire set to do? That can be changing your drag brake to 100% or something.
Defiantly try the new software, I have my drag brake at 100% and the drag brake ramp set to very slow, and I love it. Holds very firm on hills, and no instant lockups.

[Inspector86]

My Mamba X and 1800kv revolver has the drag brake set at 5% before I was finally happy with it.

[mewalsh100]

All good info guys. Thanks for the intel!

[mewalsh100]

Ok - Did the firmware update, and set drag brake to 5% with the 1800kv Revolver. I also set the new drag brake ramp feature to Medium. Much, much better!

[JohnRobHolmes]

I need to retune my sidewinder 4 and Revolver with the newest firmware, I bet we can bump up drag quite a bit and use the drag ramp to prevent rollovers.

[mewalsh100]

Originally Posted by JohnRobHolmes

I need to retune my sidewinder 4 and Revolver with the newest firmware, I bet we can bump up drag quite a bit and use the drag ramp to prevent rollovers.

That was kinda my thought John. I'm playing around with it again this afternoon. I was able to increase drag to 8% now with Medium Ramp. I'm going to keep tweaking until I get it right where I want it.


Still ABSOLUTELY LOVING this Revolver BTW!

[durok]

For my 1800kv Revolver-powered 3S & 4S Bomber, I was directed to this helpful video (Many thanks, Justin from HH!):



After viewing that, and including some things I'd picked up regarding the Auxiliary Wire function of the Mamba X, I used the following settings ~

Basic:
Cutoff Voltage Auto Li-Po (Default)
Auto-Lipo Volts/Cell 3.5 Volts/Cell
Reverse Type With Reverse (Default)
BEC Voltage 8.0V
Idle/Error Beep Disable 4
Brake Amount 50% (Default)
Drag Brake 30.0%
Power:
Start Power High
Max Power 100% (Default)
Reverse Percentage 30%
Punch Control 30%
Torque Control Value 0
Torque Control Electrical Motor kV Not Determined
Advanced:
Arming Time 1.5s (Default)
Auxiliary Wire Mode 96
Link Live Enable Disabled (Default)
Throttle Dead Band Average (0.1000 ms) (Default)
Full Reverse 1.048 ms
Neutral 1.479 ms
Full Forward 1.910 ms
Motor:
Motor Direction Normal (Default)
Motor Type Smart Sense™ Brushless (Default), Checkbox: False
Sensorless Motor Timing Lowest (0)
Motor Temperature Cutoff Disabled (Default)
Logging:
Data Log Enabled 2047
Sample Frequency 5 Sample / Sec (Default)
Automatic Data Reset Disabled (100%) (Default)

For the Throttle Curve, per JRH's video I used a curve made by placing one point at 20% up the graph at 50% throttle input.

No Brake Curve setting was used, left it linear.

I am using a FlySky GT3C radio and stock gearing, and it free-wheels perfectly in Rock-Racing mode while having just the right amount of drag-brake for dirt and rock use on a heavy-weight Bomber when switched to Rock-Crawler mode.

[mewalsh100]

Good info Durok. I had already put a throttle curve in at about 30%. Eveything is feeling really good now, although I’ll still keep playing with it.

[mewalsh100]

I played around a bit more with the set up today and I'm thoroughly pleased with it now. Medium seems to be the sweet spot for me on Drag Brake Ramp feature. Increased Drag Brake to 10% and it holds firm on steeps. I'm loving the way it "ramps" to brake now as you go throttle neutral. No more ass over tea kettle! I also mimicked the curve from the Holmes video versus the previous curve I was running. The rig is just so "usable" now.

[NitroBugg]

Is there a simple way to toggle the drag brake ON or OFF with the Mamba X and Futaba 4PV using CH3 or CH4, and assigning a button to accomplish this? I'm running v2.02 software.

When I'm rockracing\bashing, I want my rig to slow "some" when I return to neutral, and will stop full when I manually apply brake with the transmitter.
When I want to crawl, I want the drag brake to be ON so that when I'm traversing a pile of rocks...when I return to neutral, the brake will hold\lock my rig in position until I start moving forward again.

I guess what is confusing me is brake settings on the transmitter vs brake settings in the ESC, and which ones do what...or does one override the other?

Coming from using a basic RTR transmitter....I'm overwhelmed with the available options on the higher end transmitters and ESC's, and "for me" this is a VERY steep learning curve for this particular application. Most all of the other adjustments I've learned how to adjust, so I don't have an issue with those. Its just the brake\drag break settings that are giving me a hard time. (being an old fart may play into this too)

I will apply some of the suggestions listed here and see if I can make it work for me. Glad to have so many knowledgeable people on here to turn to. Thanks to all that put up with the same question asked over and over again.

[HumboldtEF]

What you've described is pretty much the Crawler/rock race mode. You can can simply toggle the drag brake on and off (or strong and weak) but you want the reverse mode changed too so you dont jam it into reverse on accident when trying to brake. The crawler/rock race mode allows you to set a switching point for where the drag brake is lowered and the reverse mode is changed to a delay or double tap (I forget which).

Read through this thread here and also this one on the Castle firmware Mamba Firmware V2.02

Brake settings should be done in the ESC, the radio settings are for amount of braking only and really only used in racing, though adjusting these from the radio wont effect the drag brake if you do adjust it (with Castle software brake amount has no effect on drag brake)

[NitroBugg]

Slowly I'm getting the hang of this now. Have the drag break set up, and works great for crawling. I agree with mewalsh100...between 5-8% is where it responded the best. Any higher than 10, and it was full lock for some reason.

Now I need to make some adjustments on the rock race side so that my rig won't do front flips when I return to neutral while going 15mph.