Originally Posted by
andreas78
Hi,
there' should be a potentiometer where you can adjust gain for the MLA30, but you will have to open the housing. Marco is right, if the blue led is flickering even without a transponder nearby, it is picking up all kinds of noises -> gain is set too high.
It's also hard to tell if the transponder puts out a proper signal, if you don't have a scope. Do you have an original Mylaps transponder, an old RC3 transponder would be perfect, because the decoder can read it right away.
Andi
No, don't own one of those. Might be able to borrow one though.
Will give the potentiometer some adjustment to see if things get better.
Moved the transponder around on the chassis, and when I got further away from the ESC (Hobbywing brushless) I got better detection. Went from 0-2 to 5-9 hits.
Thanks all for the tips, will investigate further.
Would one of those USB oscilloscopes around $50 suffice?
Also andreas78 mentioned to me that not all 5Mhz crystals are created equal, they require different capacitor values. I did not know about this, and it turns out that the ones I ordered states 18uF, not the 20uF (using andreas78's PCB) I was using.