Tuesday 14 October 2014

HAVE YOU SPEKTRUM-ED ?


The spectrum board for the Mini-Z has been out for a couple of months for now and we are starting to see it gain popularity. I have been asked so many times. Is spektrum better than the ASF?
Is it faster? Is it more responsive? 

In my honest opinion, I wouldn't say which is better but I can share the advantages.

1. Braking - the spectrum works on a different channel for brakes and reverse where else the ASF doesn't. You are able to set a much milder braking force and not sacrifice your reverse speed.

2. Power - oh yes, the spektrum board is indeed punchy because the original board comes factory fitted with double layers of the PN FETS. And these fets have one of the lowest resistances and yet able to handle 8 AMPS of power draw. The stock fets on the ASF doesn't give you that much of power. But of cos you can swap out the stock fets on the ASF boards with some PN FETS to give you more power

3. Ports - the additional ports on the board powers the transponders leaving the I.C.S port free. No more plugging and unplugging your transponder just to do I.C.S programming.

4. Software - the PN software for ICS programming is a lot simpler than the Kyosho ones. And I bet you. You will definitely be playing with the software a lot more. The ASF version is so complicated and it seems like I need to carry a bible just to do some settings. And that is one of the main reason ASF I.C.S software is never popular. At times software settings on the car is a lot faster than hardware settings during races.

5. On Board Processor - the spectrum board has 2 ICs on board for data processing. One for the steering and the other for speed. Where else ASF uses 1 IC to do both the processing. I feel individual processing is definitely better than shared processing. 

Lastly I feel that the  Prefect Combo = Spektrum + PN ICS Blue tooth adaptor + Android phone. Thats all you need for most of the races. Simple, Lightweight and the phone is always in the pocket. 
Plenty of setting options.

You decide :) 

4 comments:

  1. thanks for the review! looks like a pretty cool combination... was wondering how much would the pn board, pn ics blue tooth adaptor cost, not to mention a spektrum radio?

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  2. just did some research on the dx4c radio... it seems like it offers a feature called avc - active vehicle control which sounds and functions pretty much like an on-board gyro... is this feature built into the pn board as well?

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  3. k frederick c, its been over a year now since this was posted. how would you grade the success of the pn racing spektrum board, whether its the standalone or chassis'ied version, over these past 12+ months ???

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  4. hi, do you still racing mini Z ?

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