Finally have the control system off the bench and in the woods. Nothing overly sophisticated- throttle, fwd/rev, servos for the couplers, single channel sound and an RFID reader.
Getting a really good range. I do love those little xbee fellows, really easy to fling data packets all through the ether.
The throttle needs some tweaking, I have a pololu 18v7 in there and have not programmed any of the momentum or acceleration/braking parameters. I also think I need to tweak the firmware for more control at the low end.
The sound is passable I guess but it’s only a single channel mp3 player. It has canned sounds I sampled off YouTube. I have a much nicer sound card, 8 channels independently mixable but thats going to go into the Dash 9 later on.
Anyhow, a short video if you are interested: