How to wire up twin brushed motors for my Zipkits Tug Boat

[cruisor]

I'd like to set up my Zippkits tugboat with twin motors so I can make it very maneuverable when recovering a dead boat on the water.

I would like to use a stick type radio as well.

So with that said what kind of equipment would I need and what would I need for batteries. Zippkits offers batteries to power the boat 6v SLA of which 2 are needed. This would not only power the boat but offer ballast as well.

Thanks for any help on my project.

Lee

[785boats]

Lee.
I've built a few boats with independent dual motors & a 4 channel stick radio.
Simply connect the ESC for each motor to the two channels that are operated by the vertical moving sticks.
Left stick to the left motor, & the right stick to the right motor, obviously.
It's basically called Tank Steering.
Each motor has forward & reverse.
A rudder can still be operated with one of the horizontal channels too.

You can have a separate battery powering each motor if you want. Or one larger battery supplying both ESCs with a parallel harness.

If you are using a separate receiver battery pack, or UBEC for the Rx, you must remove the red wire from both of the ESC cables that plug into the RX.

If you wish to use the bec in one of the ESC's to power the RX, you must remove the red wire from the other ESC's receiver plug.

Otherwise the different voltages can burn out the rails in the receiver or the bec's in the ESC's.

Cheers.

[cruisor]

Thanks 785boats very much for your input. Your explanation makes this a much easier task than I thought it would be.

Lee

[785boats]

No worries.
I went digging through my archives & found the following diagram.
The only difference is that the two batteries are connected in parallel before the ESC's.
This is a good way to make sure that both motors always have the same voltage at them. But it is not entirely necessary with the setup in a tug with a nominal power draw. Your choice.

I assume that you are using brushed motors & ESC's? But if you are using brushless setups, it is exactly the same. Except don't put a fuse in the motor wires.
That's if you were going to use fuses at all. I never have in any of my scale boats.

Cheers.

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