In 2021 I created a reproduction communicator for the Valiant Turtle, having been given one as a Christmas present. I realised there were turtles out there lacking their communicators and decided to create a control board to help people get theirs working.
At the time I only had my turtle for testing, it’s a MKII model with a serial number of 01/7260 which works perfectly with my turtle controller’s original firmware. I recently supplied one to LinuxJedi who has an earlier turtle with a much lower serial number than mine. He found it would work with all commands except FW, which resulted in a certain amount of jitter when moving in the forwards direction.
LinuxJedi very kindly altered the timings so the firmware would operate his turtle correctly, and sent the amended code back so I could test with mine. Both now appear to be working correctly. Of the sixteen I’ve sold I’m only aware of this one instance of it not working correctly.
I wanted to create this post to inform anyone who’s had similar experiences that there’s a firmware update available that should rectify this issue. I can also provide a replacement microcontroller if you haven’t got a programmer suitable for flashing the PIC18F26K22 yourself.
There’s more information on my website about this project, and also a link to the updated firmware...
https://eccentriccreations.co.uk/valian ... icator.php
If there’s anyone here who owns one of my turtle controllers I’d love to know how you got on with it, or if there’s anything you need help with.