David Holland 2 Posted December 16, 2015 Share Posted December 16, 2015 May I seek the expertise of the forum on a question of connecting servos to rx? Can I gang all the positive leads and all the negative leads from the servos, together with the respective battery leads, to one set of pins on the receiver and then just use the signal leads from the individual rx outputs to each servo? Does that make any sense? I am trying to shoehorn 5 servos into a small (16mm to the foot) live steam locomotive that I have just built and space is very much at a premium, and I have to keep it all away from the hot bits. I want to reduce the number of wire going to the receiver to a minimum and I reckon that if the above is possible it would reduce the wire count from 17 to 7. Looking at the receiver PCB, the positive and negative output pins seem to share common lands. Thanks in advance and I promise my next post will be on the subject of aircraft! David Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Matt Jones Posted December 16, 2015 Share Posted December 16, 2015 David, the short answer is yes. It's standard practice if you wire up a din connector to group the positive and negative wires and run separate signal wires. I've done it for years Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paul Marsh Posted December 16, 2015 Share Posted December 16, 2015 I've done the same on my HK B-25 Mitchell. It came with a board, where the power lead plugged into a rx port, and the outputs just had a pin going to the signal lead. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Geoff S Posted December 16, 2015 Share Posted December 16, 2015 I agree with Matt. The positive and negative power connections are commoned in the receiver anyway. Might be a good idea to use the heaviest gauge wire you can fit in though. That's quite a small scale. How big is the loco? Geoff Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
David Holland 2 Posted December 16, 2015 Author Share Posted December 16, 2015 Thanks, fellas. I was fairly sure it would work but was confident that the forum could confirm or otherwise. Geoff, 16mm is quite a popular scale now. It is a narrow gauge garden railway format using 32mm ( 0 gauge) track to represent 2ft gauge prototypes and 45mil (gauge 1) for 3ft/metre gauge locos. This loco is a 0-4-0 saddle tank, about 10ins long, 5 wide and 6 high. All the radio has to fit under the footplate and I insist on making life difficult by wanting to control not only direction and speed but also whistle, drain cocks and uncoupling. It is a bit of a departure because my previous builds are 7 1/4 inch gauge, narrow gauge locos which weigh about 800lbs. It is surprising how useful a metal working workshop is to aircraft modelling and if I had not been won over by electric flight I would have liked to try an multi-cylinder ic engine for aircraft use but there are not enough hours in the day for every project and I already need to live to about 320 to finish my current list! David Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Frank Skilbeck Posted December 17, 2015 Share Posted December 17, 2015 David, if it's a metal frame on the loco there's no reason why the negative leads from the servos's, Rx and battery couldn't all be grounded to the frame, saving more wiring. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
David Holland 2 Posted December 17, 2015 Author Share Posted December 17, 2015 Good thinking Frank. Having spent 35 yeatrs in the motor trade you would have thought that I would twigged that one! David Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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