The R/C Snowcat is HERE!!!

[@shize9ine]

Imagine a snowcat with long range FPV gear on it and a solar airplane loitering around with a FPV tx/rx relay that has better LOS to the ground station.

[@thomasevans1128]

Starting his own surveillance company

[@oliverer3]

Could be fun! But the more snow you have the less sun there generally is.

[@retr0_fps]

image ukraine using then with c4 strapped to the back to destroy russian tanks

[@timesnewroman5923]

@@retr0_fps thanks for your idea, we should try it

[@ToxNano]

Replace the airplane with a blimp for better loiter time. Someone should design an easy to use lighter than air drone :D

[@marcaos713]

If you are using 6s voltage on the ESCs with no caps might explain the current spikes and blowing up, try adding some caps to the ESCs to help with the spikes and hopefully stopping them from exploding. You could also add a RushFPV power filter board to snip all the current and voltage spikes in the butt once and for all. Works great for mini quads, so it could help the snow cat a lot

[@LyroLife]

He knows that. I mean he is basically a genius

[@rctestflight]

I still blew up a few with big caps installed. Its not an inductive voltage spike problem...

[@槑]

Those cheap ESCs don't have hardware current limit capability，you need a cycle-by-cycle over current protection ESC which usually also has build-in current control loop which means better torque performance.

[@TheStuartstardust]

@@槑 so a SW issue. Is the bl-heli open source SW/FW? Seems like some stuff could be fixed in SW

[@sethinman7206]

The FetTEC voltage spike protection thing might be helpful

[@AlRoderick]

Now that you have an injection mold for snowcat tracks you might try to design a different vehicle that uses the same track segments that you can get for cheap now and performs a different job. Maybe actually design a remote controlled snow tractor with that big gear reduction, or a half-track with skis in the front.

[@theyeetus1428]

Or a bulldozer

[@k-osmonaut8807]

something like a kharkovchanka (jesus i hope i pronounced that right) or even a double segmented cargo vehicle would be awesome

[@fozzillo]

If you watch to the end, after the sponsor, you will see things that can not be unseen... BRILLIANT!

[@28th_St_Air]

OMG That was hysterical and may cause some snowcat buyers to question whether they should disinfect some of their kit parts before handling. Ha ha.

[@ibthor]

Umm. WTF was that?

[@donnamarie3617]

Oh dear, how does one "un see" that!

[@JamesGood]

Too funny!!!

[@EchoBuildsThings]

That was amazing

[@MalteSpieltYT]

it would be fun to see a very large model, like a big ship or big vehicle!

[@fiskehjort8277]

a big tug boat maybe. Like 1 - 2 meters long with big puwerfull motors that can tug a lot.

[@garrettstater7700]

Yes a snowcat he could ride on

[@joran4612]

@@garrettstater7700 or a real tank that can shoot and then drive to russia

[@garrettstater7700]

@@joran4612 and defeat the Russians and save Ukrainian civilians and stop world war 3 that’d be such a dope video

[@rheinerftvideo2647]

@@joran4612 The autonomous tank already exists. It is currently used by the Ukrainian defense. Something to put hiding in the battlefield and shooting out of nowhere. It is remote controlled.

[@Drew_Pearson]

Dude the bro-curement montage...pure gold!

[@NURMALGUCKER]

The ending is awesome! I love that song :D Actually... I love the whole video! Well done!

[@akraus53]

Yeah I feel like most people didn't watch thru the ad! There's way to few comments about that!!

[@spookydonkey2195]

Lol dropping the motor got me

[@Superwoodputtie]

Pooping the motor into the box. Hahaha

[@TheCatAliasTNT2k]

Taking a wild guess here: The overcurrent protection might just be way to slow to react to to this short spikes. Do you have a log file or something, where you can see, if this protection activated? You can then drive around and see later, if it activated, and compare it to your diagram. Or just take something to draw too much current (resistor that can handle a lot of heat for example) and add a multimeter to the circuit to see, what the overcurrent protection does and under which circumstances it activates (you will have to do this experiment in you lab obviously). Test things like the following: How long do you need to have too much current (add a manual switch, that you can close, and look at your diagram afterwards, to see, when you protection jumped in)? Does this time change, if you change the current? But be careful to not grill another part of your circuit while doing this.

[@VulpeculaJoy]

Also, fuses are a thing...

[@KirtFitzpatrick]

@@VulpeculaJoy Underrated comment.

[@moritzadler4362]

This sadly does not work as the esc detetects if the motor connected to it is spinning or not and if there is no motor the esc will cut power as it won't be able to sense the self induction caused voltage changes on the motor wires by which rotational speed and timing etc is estimated. That's kinda how sensorless esc's work.

[@lukearts2954]

Seems like a good approach to find a solution. I remember when I was still designing industrial dust vac systems that I once had a very peculiar problem that had never occurred in any of the other workshops, and both the issue and the solution may be related here. Symptoms: When the filter fan was started up cold, it blew the automatic fuse of the building 4 times out of 5. After a few weeks we also received an official warning from the utility company of the city that they would take us off the grid if we didn't fix our amp drain spikes. The issue: I put 2 and 2 together, and went to look at the way the startup circuit worked. Turns out it was intended to have a slightly delayed start-up by controlling the power output of the power source to the fan. BUT, the street had a fairly weak electric cable. This was a professional woodworking shop that was oddly placed in a residential street with only 2-phased power lines. So what happens when you ask for more current? Right, the voltage of the supply drops. But when the control system feedback loop is based on power and not current, then a drop in voltage will increase the needed current, so the input resistance got further lowered, thus further increasing the current and further dropping the voltage. This effect only occurred for about 2 to 3 seconds. The automatic fuse had a delay of 3 seconds, explaining the irregular tripping. And because the startup would trip the fuse, the owner left the filter running until lunch break and then all the way through the evening, so basically he would start it up only twice a day, giving the neighbors blinking lights and rebooting PCs twice a day (hence the warning). Curiously, the issue never occurred when the fan was still running out, however low the rpm. It would run Solution: We put in an extra control box before the filter that would temporarily choke the current and maintain the voltage whenever the fan was below a low-but-non-zero rpm; and then slowly reduced its effect over a set period of time. This increased the start-up time from 10 seconds to 45 seconds, which was about the time anyone would need to walk from the power switch of the filter to any of the machines it was serving anyway. If I would relate this to what is shown in the video, the chip in the control box would just dynamically change the values of "current protection" and "ramp-up" and maybe a few others. A low max current and low ramp-up would cause a slow start, and then increasing the ramp-up once the rpm threshold is reached while steadily increasing the current protection with the rpm between 1A and 5A. But I guess to know that rpm, you'd need sensored motors unless he adds an optical switch on one of the axles or gears to measure the rpm locally.

[@TheCatAliasTNT2k]

@@VulpeculaJoy Sure, but are there fuses, which are resetting themselves automatically, when the load vanishes? The only goal is to protect from overcurrent, not to shut the whole thing down....

[@AndyDoesJapan]

@0:11 Thumbs up if the fact that the tread speed perfectly matched the camera's frame rate made you really confused for a second

[@andrewhamop6665]

The tracks aren't actually moving that fast, he just used a different colored filament for that set of tracks because he ran out of black.

[@ECEXCURSION]

Just wanted to let you know that the skit at the end of the video was what made me pull the trigger on a kit. Time well spent!

[@kaikewley2466]

This thing rips! I loved the view from inside the cab :D

[@ventusprime]

5:50 I think the problem is with the reaction time of the regulator, or the chip that compute the regulation think of the spike as noise in the measuring, or sampling failure.

[@QuadMcFlyFlies]

I suspect the deadtime in those ESCs might be off. Often with cheaper ESCs the components tend to be de-rated which can result in a slower on-off time than projected which can lead to shoot through which can cause overheating and burns. See if you can get Steffen to make you a BLHeli32 build for those with a slightly increased deadtime.

[@rctestflight]

Interesting... Thanks for the info!

[@AbeYoung]

17:03 the music starts. 17:09 my gut explodes due to laughter and now I'm riding in an ambulance. I love it.

[@Wolfieny]

The ending was the cherry on the cake!

[@plaetzchen86]

The last minute of this video man... chef's kiss!

[@eduardsozolins9421]

Can you make more boats? I realy like those videos.

[@swaits4no1]

2nd that... like a mini barge (to house the electonics) or the like to go down the river... like 100 miles or to the gulf.. solar recharging, way points, big propellers, stellar views... go go

[@eduardsozolins9421]

@@swaits4no1 Yes

[@fireredorange2659]

agreed

[@TerribleShmeltingAccident]

Yeasssss

[@bob2859]

I was absolutely not ready for the ending!

[@HaloWolf102]

4:49 5 Amp snowcat looks like a blast!

[@jdjr3640]

You are a wizard! The ending KILLED me 🤣 (16:47)

[@bgbthabun627]

IKR?

[@OliverGardens]

Best thing about this video is the packaging montage at the end

[@scottiniowa1]

Thank you Thank you Thank you for the screen shot and explanation of the changes to the BLHeli32 programming. Just made those changes to my original snow tank and it works so much better!

[@CDRaff]

I don't live in a place where a Snowcat makes sense so I didn't pick one up, but I'm happy that it was successful for you. Hopefully the next project you sell is something that us desert dwellers can use.

[@TankToChest]

Sand cat….

[@hikeaphoto746]

Myself has not tried to use 3D printing. I really enjoyed wathing your video and your use. Glade to here you in my state as well. I have only changed one of my 40 year old cars, it was good. I had a stroke so it takes days instead of day to make things. Thanks very much!

[@ryanb915]

The ESC issue could be similar to that i have had on G120s at work that there is a time delay on the over current before it will trigger it to cut out. so maybe worth checking the finer print to see what time delays might be set, as motors can spike oddly.

[@dcolb121]

The people waving at the snowcat and the narrative made me smile.

[@colinzoffel9183]

I was up at summit west that day touring didnt see it but heard from people coming up about it. Awesome build!

[@roboman2444]

You can get sensored "adapters" that bolt on to the outside of many common outrunner size cans.

[@TheJPomp]

This must all be incredibly satisfying for you. Congratulations!

[@GoingtoHecq]

In regards to your closing segment, I really appreciate and enjoy the creativity and fun you put into that segment of your video.

[@FAMILYUNITmusic]

The DJI goggles record telemetry data as a subtitle file and you can turn on the subtitle track in your video player to see some of the data.

[@jaxes88]

Great video! As a skier I loved seeing you take it to a ski resort. It did get me thinking, I bet these snowcats would be quite handy to use for avalanche rescue (for resorts or backcountry)! For somebody who understood such things it'd be interesting to see if one could be set up to drive autonomously and home in on a signal from an avalanche beacon, or possibly utilize some type of snow penetrating radar to look for victims. For doing grid searches it would be quite useful to have several of them using gps data to track where they have and haven't gone.

[@oliverer3]

This should be fully possible if the person being rescued is carrying an active rescue beacon, passive rescue beacons however tends to need rather high power equipment and good line of sight which is why they're almost exclusively tracked with helicopters.

[@stutterpunk9573]

I'm juuuuust high enough for that last part. That jingled my brain bells

[@RenderMan1337]

I suggest doing the 1200mw mod to your DJI goggles if you haven't updated them to the lockout firmware they just rolled out. Also changing out the stock antenna for some more directional ones to punch even further. I'd really like to see a long range snowcat video!

[@morkovija]

That was the best outro i've seen this year. thank you for blessing us

[@SharkLasers380]

Love the view from inside the snow cat

[@JJsAutomotive]

Little speaker on the POV machines saying "SkyNet has commenced" would be a nice greeting.

[@CausticLemons7]

Really cool that you've done so much work to make this project so great. Thanks!

[@joewoodchuck3824]

This is very cool. I've always liked the full size ones for how well they can get around. Having the model would be a hoot. Every time I see a video of this ilk, my "NEED" list grows.

[@BrandonPoulton]

16:47 God Bless America and rctestflight!

[@ivanf4023]

You could solve the low speed torque problem by using brushed motors. Of course that means replacing both ESC and motor but usually brushed ESCs are cheaper than brushless and brushed motors still spin really fast.

[@coolbone6177]

Main reason why he want brushless is no more lipos with out

[@ivanf4023]

@@coolbone6177 That doesn't make any sense. Brushed crawlers use LiPo all the time. The Hobbywing 1080 is the gold standard ESC for brushed crawlers and the default battery mode is LiPo. There's 6s compatible ESCs out there for brushed motors as well.

[@coolbone6177]

@@ivanf4023 no I do relised but a Lot of the time if you want fast turn and high gearing cars you don't want to use brushless because lipo last way longer

[@Martin-zo8lz]

you can programm blheli 32 escs with an arduino using the 4wayif as well btw

[@Snookers_]

There's a good chance this won't do anything for you, but consider adding capacitors near the battery leads on each ESC. Usually ESC's will have lots of bulk capacitance near the battery leads to smooth out the massive voltage spikes that result from current being turned on and off quickly. Your ESC has only some small ceramic capacitors that in all honesty, aren't enough for 50A. General rule of thumb is 20uF per amp but those little ceramic caps come nowhere close to that. I'm not an EE so I'd take what I'm saying with a grain of salt, but if you look at your collection of ESC's, I'm betting most of them will have some form of electrolytic capacitor near the battery input leads.

[@ryanincro17]

Been watching your videos the past week. Something about the wave just made me laugh out loud. i'm a huge RC Enthusiast and am super happy I found your channel. Love your attitude, I'm from the PNW and can appreciate the extra challenge of playing with RC in such environments. Please keep the videos coming! Love it. Subscribed for sure.

[@AerialWaviator]

Awesome snowcat. Only thing missing is an action character riding in the snowcat with floppy ears, or hair braids, so can see in FPV view, or external as going over the mole hills.

[@marblesky9252]

Watching him interact with people through the drone is so wholesome

[@bechirbenothman5453]

I loved the waving. I suggest you add a little sign (a hand) that raises up with a nd waves at ppl.

[@5hape5hift3r]

could add almost spike shaped protrusions form the tracks so it can grip onto hard snow. or make the ridges less flat to the ground.

[@dafoex]

A torquier gearbox and/or motors sounds fun! Can't wait to see what more and more people do with it!

[@V8chump]

I can’t help but notice the components you use are wildly different than something you’d find in other ready to run RCs, such as MASSIVE 10Ah 6s batteries and those tiny super cheap programmable ESCs that seem to preform insanely well all things considered. Super cool to see all these projects 😁

[@schultheismatthius]

I love the snowcat and I would really like to have one, but I live in a very hot and humid place, not really SNOWcat friendly environment. It's really cool seeing you overcome problems that you encounter with the snowcat. Anyways that was my 2 cents.

[@mike_oe]

Great installment in the snowcat series. As Malte Spielt below, I was also thinking larger scale. Both your snowcat and the WIG / hydrofoils experience deserves a larger expression...

[@kotori87gaming89]

Have you considered doing an autonomous sailing ship? Whether square-rigged, bermuda-rigged, or one of those fancy wing-sails, I would love to see if Ardupilot is capable of handling a vehicle that cannot always go directly towards its destination.

[@TheRealStructurer]

Great little contraption 👍🏼 Thanks for sharing 👍🏼

[@jknewb6276]

Omg I've never witnessed something so beautiful....motors don't just fall out of brown eyes daily folks.

[@fourthpanda]

You should use Falcon 500 motors with their built in encoders for this project or a similar one. They are designed for FRC but might work well for your application.

[@operationxz8584]

I love it. Thanks for taking it a step further and putting in all the work. Just ordered a set!

[@jacobdavidcunningham1440]

5:10 lol 8:58 ooh clean snow 9:48 damn that looks good 12:50 not a paid actor

[@bboomer7th]

I like the colours.

[@birdseyeview1543]

Oh my, I just saw a vision of retracts on the bottom, with skis.

[@Brados1221]

Little working windshield wipers would be awesome on the cab fpv shots. Nice build

[@rustlerboi1052]

OMFG the clip at the end was amazing!

[@CryptoTonight9393]

Some thing like this would be amazing for search and rescue. Also you should put a speaker on it so you can talk to people on the ski hill

[@goldendredger]

You've done a bang up job with this project! Glad to see it where it is and what it has become. It sure ounces it's way through the snow with style! Love it.

[@Rallyman240]

You could also try sensorless car ESCs in combination with your current motors. Todays sensorless Car ESCs handle cogging pretty well.

[@paulabbott3601]

You can get a fur lined RC transmitter rain cover that will keep you hands warm.

[@JoshuaJCook]

You have won the internet for today! Best ending to a KZbin video ever!!!!!🤘

[@oitoitoi1]

would love for a future one to be really torque oriented, so it could drag stuff uphill, potentially with an ability to follow you on ski tours.

[@donnanorth7324]

I thought of a great autonomous vehicle project, but it is a bit different than what you are used to. An autonomous rover with a metal detector strapped under it, and with data logging, to profile a 500m sq area. You use the data to go back later to give the hotspots closer attention.

[@timothywalsh1001]

STAGE 2 You need to add suspension and more wheels for hard terrain. .. Also, the motors/ESC's for rc crawlers are designed for low speed torque.

[@callmemaybe8807]

Such a cool creation. I was thinking about designing a heavy duty one intended for backcountry skiing, to pull you up the slope.

[@wiegraf9009]

Could flip on a steep slope and kill you like a snowmobile is prone to do

[@htmagic]

OK, the snow cat is very cool and I wished I pulled the trigger on the Kickstarter. You do realize that the Lost in Space Chariot used a snowcat base. This would be so cool seeing a Lost in Space Chariot that is RC, complete with Robot B-9 riding in the back! 3-D print a top to go along with the base, then hurry up and take my money!

[@lukearts2954]

17:25 Ya', I think I 'm going to wait for batch 3...

[@TimsBitsnPieces]

Your snowcat with the body on it looks very much like the Bombi from Matts off-road recovery. It would be great for search and rescue missions etc... as you could send it out and look for people or things and then you would know where to go by following the info provided... or have a 2 way radio attached to it and then the people could take the radio off and use it to get help.. so many ideas and things you could do with this. Great stuff.

[@lostfound8112]

Wow thats better than a store bought machine! Really nice work

[@martinfinne7259]

If you have the time and skills or the will to learn I'd say you take a open source ESC that can take hall feedback and scale it for the needs of the snowcat. You'd have the software ready and letting someone produce smaller batches of assembled PCBs are not that expensive nowadays. If it is hard to find it is probably also possible to sell just the ESCs

[@curiousviewer5991]

Need a little cheerful beep like R2D2 on your drone when meeting people like that. lol.

[@airgunnut9489]

This could be very useful to search and rescue, carrying emergency supplies to those who need it. To get around the signal issue, how about using a drone to to bounce the signal off and to work in tandem with the snow cat.

[@danielmahon1589]

a solar fixed wing drone would be best have it fly a fixed pattern and as long as it is a relatively sunny day 4 to 8 operation hours would be possible.

[@pollyg562]

the ski resort i worked at would close when a bigfoot was spotted and we had a list of excuses and the usual bear wasn't an option man people would get upset

[@gizelle-s]

I wish I could have afforded one. They're awesome!

[@murrijuana2842]

Put some make up on and get to work... wishing won't make it happen.

[@AntiVaganza]

@@murrijuana2842 In 2022, comments like these still happen? On a channel like this even. Bascially, you are assuming she's lazy and that because she is a woman, she somehow has to wear make up?

[@lobsterbark]

Currently designing my own rc car basically from scratch because I'm broke and want one. $100 worth of parts on Amazon. Don't know much about RC parts so I ended up buying a way better steering servo and battery than I needed, could have easily only spent $80 if I had known that. But I guess it worked out because I'm using the steering servo to do differential braking, and a weaker servo wouldn't have had the torque to do that. Even if you are short on cash, if you have a 3d printer it doesn't cost too much to have a ton of fun with rc stuff.

[@ezrarichardson279]

I’ve loved this snowcat project!

[@TheZolon]

DJI goggle dvr should also have an srt file that contains the stats. There are a few online tools that will rebuild the OSD using the srt for playback.

[@atluxity]

You really earned that like... What an ending

[@wvuvino21]

Blue and Yellow…. Anyone ever been to WVU? Reminds me of a badarse RC PRT aka public rapid transit

[@dansw0rkshop]

LOL!!! I had the misfortune of watching all the way to the end to see the brocurement.

[@Hampsterfeld]

The ending is just... Priceless.

[@djmips]

16:47 I wonder how many cut away during the Brilliant commercial and missed the Brocurement! LOL

[@MatHolliday]

Really hope a third batch comes out at some point. Ive been following this for a while now and just missed the second batch.

[@pauljs75]

Powered skis or snowboard might be an interesting idea, provided that kind of track construction could handle more weight. Did such an idea float around at least, because it sounds fun if it could be made to work. Other than that, might try to have somebody figure out how to make a fleece lined bag that goes over the controller to keep your hands warm while using it. (I think some RC plane people have something like this already, as there's some niche group that still does winter flying.)

[@XLessThanZ]

6:55, sounds like the same reason why e-Skateboard manufacturers ask users to push off when starting rather than just standing on the skateboard and throttling it.

[@ItsWourn]

Bro I don’t know who you are amd what these songs you do, but I’m here for it. Making some really cool stuff

[@daxdadog]

Oh man...I can't un-see that bro-curement! I just became a Patreon, so I don't feel guilty about skipping ads.

[@moritzadler4362]

Low RPM Power Protect seems to be the feature you should turn on as it hevily limits the current when spinning slow or stalling. Enabeling this also to some degree changes the way current protection works at least in my experience. Also try experimenting with maximum acceleration as you probably won't notice decreasing while decreasing current draw. The rampup power setting does the same thing but produces really weired throttle response und can even lower max rpm.

[@rctestflight]

Low RPM Power Protect would definitely keep the ESCs from burning up but it also keeps the motors from spinning...

[@rolliseventeen]

i think of using the rpm filtering in betaflight and the snowcat, but i dont know if this is running in this setup. i guess the motors are in servo mode. maybe someone did before..... but betaflight can see the motor rpm if using blheli_32 or bluejay firmware on blheli_s escs. this can prevent from powering up too much. ramp up 80 is already really high :-)

[@isaacmarch2184]

From 10,000 to 400,000 in a 2 years or so, the progression is insane

[@rcvg69420]

One thing the rock crawler guys are doing is flashing AM32 on blheli32 escs and running big outrunner motors on their crawlers. AM32 has really good low speed fidelity using "Sine Start". there are forks of AM32 as well that do this even better and it will totally fix your low speed throttle resolution issue. One thing that I've found to help as well is if you modify the radio settings to lower the speed on your motor channels. I mean transition speed. I believe this is pretty straight forward in opentx.... I know my RC car radio has a setting for this which I use with my rock crawlers to make the throttle less twitchy. This will also help with your ESC burning issue.

[@rcvg69420]

Just search AM32 crawler on youtube to see some examples of the firmware in action.

[@russellzauner]

By observation, if you hold another kickstarter for something even better than molds you have a good chance of succeeding. If parts made of resin are what you require, check into a Carbon3D subscription. 25x the speed of regular 3D printers and retains all the structural properties of the source materials, due to the technology process they've developed. The only downside is that only their resins work with the printer, but even that is mitigated by offering several industry standard resin profiles at reasonable costs. An additional upside is that you can produce parts that aren't possible by any other reasonable method, and prototype many of them quickly. They did a TED talk in 2015 demonstrating/explaining their process, and it's been tested by a lot of big makers, including Adam Savage's Tested in 2016.

[@borgonianevolution]

Dude that thing carves snow drifts like a surfer carves waves! Switching to actual land based motors and ESC's would drastically help you out. They are optimized better for low speed high torque starts without spiking currents like a crackhead surprised by cops kicking down their door.

[@rapidprototyping993]

Nice simile.

[@ISuperfan]

I wonder if you could use a drone in the air above the FPV Snowcat as a signal extender to get more range on the ground.

[@dejkd]

0:44 "OHHH NO... OUR TABLE! its broken"