It uses an ATtiny85 microcontroller as the heart of the device. The chip is powered by the receiver and the glow plug is powered by a 1 cell LiPo battery that I saved from an old 3s pack that had a damaged cell.
The ATtiny85 outputs PWM to the Mosfet transistors and allow to adjust the voltage to your specific glow plug.
IMPORTANT: Make sure you always start adjusting the pot with it set to the minimum (all to the left on my board), otherwise you might (should say you will) burn your plug.
You can set in the code the channel range (in microseconds) where the igniter will be ON. Default is set between 980 and 1300 microseconds. Normally ersky9x channels output 988 microseconds for minimum throttle, and 2012 microseconds on full throttle.
You have 2 lines in the code, at the beginning where you can change the values:
Code: Select all
#define minValue 980 //Insert the minimum Value in ms (milliseconds)
#define maxValue 1300 //Insert the maximum value in ms (Milliseconds)
There is an ISP header on the board so you can change the channel range settings if needeed.
Schematic:
Component Placement:
I used the mosfet IRF7425 (Datasheet Attached) because it has a very low Turn ON voltage. This is absolutely necessary.
I also used two of them in parallel so they stay cold. One might be enough but I didn't test it.
Fuses for the ATtiny85 are:
The fuses are:
Low - E2
High - DF
Extended - FF
After you programmed the fuses, you can use the arduino IDE to program the chip. You need to install the support for the ATtiny chips of course..
All files you need are attached to this post
Here is a little demonstration video.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oOYssGeCgmQ
Another video of a setup intended to be installed in one of my Nitro powered planes.
https://www.youtube.com/edit?o=U&video_id=hmNHB02mrBI
I hope you like it. Comments and suggestions are very welcome. By the way, I'm not a programmer. I found pieces of code on the net, and adapted them to my needs. This includes the PWM example from the arduino IDE itself.
As always, build this at your own risk, I'm not responsible if you break or burn your (or somneone else's) nose with it, or if you cause damage to others or yourself.
João