why doesnt my monster have a link like my max
 

so i love the mini usb plug in my mamba max. its awesome. i can plug it in anywhere, i don't have to worry about having the battery around. and the cables are universal with my blackberry. it was all very simple.

then i went and got a monster, and to my shagrin it does not have a plug. now i bought mine second hand, and thus did not come with the link attachments.

can any of you guys lend some insight into why CC didnt design this one to have the same mini plug as the max does? i can understand most guys might not have a laptop around for programming, but for those who do, it was perfect.

heck, i'd even love to hear from a CC rep on this. what were the pro's and con's to eliminating this design feature from the monster?

My impression was that the mini-USB port on the MM was a problem area. People were breaking the connector (which was directly soldered to the brain board) and it was a place for water/dirt to easily enter the ESC.

By switching to the castle link it eliminated both of these issues. Sure, I imagine castle could have put the mini-USB on the end of a cable and had it dangling outside the ESC, but using the Rx cable was just cleaner. Besides, people were already using the castle link for programming the CC BEC's and other castle ESC's anyway.

That being said, I do admit that I fear damaging or loosing my castle link and would have preferred the mini-USB. But fully understand the losses involved in warranty repair of an ESC because people didn't respect the frailty of the port.
If using the castle link helps keep the company healthy and the prices as good as they are, I'll suffer through it :-)

I kinda miss the usb plug as well. It's cost effective to have a single dongle hook up to every product you make. You cut cost and you can forward the savings to the end user/consumer. You also bring out a new feature which is an external programmer, so no computer/laptop is required.


The ease of the usb port is priceless to me. It's just a pita opening up my rx boxes in some of my cars. If Castle had a BTO program(build to order), I would of ordered my ESC's with the usb port build in. The external program card is ok. The best one so far that I have used is from Quark. Tekin esc programming is easy as well. Just 2 buttons on the ESC itself to tweak most of the settings. There is always to choice of programming the Castle esc with the TX, but I find that to be a pain for me.
Speed passion has the Iphone application to program your esc. Tekin said that it's not cost effective form them to do so. Maybe Castle can come up with one as well. Wireless programming is cool.

Another thing that has surfaced was Windows7, with the introduction of this OS the castle link is also required to make changes on the Mamba Maxx as it was the only way to program it to make it compatible with W7.

Hooking any of the CC ESCs up to the Castle-Link/Computer is not hard, just use common sense...the square peg goes in the square hole, the round peg goes in the round hole...

The Castlelink itself is not a problem. I have the losi, ztw and tekin tongle as well. It's me getting to the rx cable that is the problem. Its faster to get to the ESC at times. This is where the usb port comes to be handy. This is why I also still have my Mamba Max when I feel like messing with settings, before I try them out in my rides with the MMpro and MMM. The Tekin is easy as there are two buttons on the ESC itself to deal with. I only use the Tekin dongle to make custom profiles and mess with the timing. But for the price of the Castle products you can't really complain.

great discussion fellas. i love being able to plug into my laptop with my MM and tinker with the settings. it just seems a lot more user friendly to me. but that might be a generational thing. we all know lots of guys who love rc but wouldnt know a mouse from a keyboard.

cell phones have always had problems with plugs like that. i had a phone that the charging port broke, and i pay for insurance. but the charge port breaking on its own was not covered under the warranty because it was "mechanical" damage. i am sure CC dealt with the same issues as you said above. people reamin on the plug would easily damage the board.

that said, it seems i need to get a castle link to make sure the MMM i have is programmed. is there any manual programming to this thing? i would at least like to have a default setting restored, since i bought this one used.

i also opened the case last night, and there was quite a bit of sand in the thing. man i hope it works...

Castle coats its boards and no need to worry about the the sand in there.

awesome. i love castle. if the thing smokes i can always get another through warranty. its why i stick with their stuff.

I have no problem with the missing USB port. But i'll like to see a bluetooth enabled MMM!

Somebody should set an open standart for ESC to USB adapters. So that with only 1 device you can program all your RC stuff.

You have the vast majority of the MMM's programming available to you through the transmitter. Go to Castle and download the manual, the instructions are a bit rough but not impossible :-)

figured as much. will do that tonight!

http://www.castlecreations.com/produ...k_connect.html Problem solved. Or just a servo extension between the ESC and the receiver, and mount the ESC/ext connection outside the box. But the Quick Connect is a bit more convenient because you don't have to disconnect anything and you can mount the long lead somewhere that's easy to get to on the vehicle.

There were multiple reasons for abandoning the side USB port. We generally have to make a bigger ESC to incorporate the plug. It increases cost on every controller. A lot of smaller applications, IE touring cars, mount the controller in such a way that you have to remove the ESC to get to the plug. Compatibility with 64 bit operating systems was probably the biggest one though. The engineers were unable to get the driver to work on 64 bit computers, so pretty much anyone with a Windows 7 machine or about half the Windows Vista machines wouldn't work; we switched from a USB driver to a HID driver and couldn't get the USB port to work.

Thomas Porfert
Tech Support
Castle Creations

Yea, I absolutely love Tekin's on-board setup, which allows you to setup or adjust pretty much anything right from the ESC, and that is awesome! Sure, I also have the Tekin Hotwire System to use my Computer to adjust ALL of the settings, but the ease of use and adjustment directly from the ESC makes the Tekin shine brightly when you are out bashing, at the track, or anywhere away from a PC.

Sure, you can adjust some of Castle's settings from the Transmitter, but it is practically stone-age compared to adjusting the Tekin! Don't get me wrong, I absolutely LOVE Castle, and run Castle Systems in My BL Revo 3.3 & various RC18Ts, but I also run Tekin Systems in my BL E-Revo, Rock-Crawlers, & various Mini-Ts. I even run Hobbywing eZRun & XERun BL Systems and Turnigy BL Systems in some of my other vehicles...I can't leave those out, because they are extremely easy to adjust in the field, either directly from the ESC or with their Programming Boxes, as well as with their own PC/USB-Link System when you are close to a computer!

Hmm...maybe you should try one of these:

Castle Field Link