Sorry if this has been covered already, newbie here.
I have spent a lot of time searching the web and still not found what I am looking for yet and I don't know enough about code to know if it would work. However this looks like the right forum to find an answer for sure.
What I am trying to achieve is simple. I am planning a quadcopter that has prop pitch control on each prop perpendicular to the frame. This is so the body (and camera) stay level. I want to send commands by a standard RC transmitter over a long range (+1000 yards) to a receiver that then passes my 'wishes' on to the Lego NXT. The NXT has input from the IMU-ACG gyro accelerometer compass to know what it is doing. The prop speed control is used to keep it level (attitude) and to move up / down (Z axis). The props each pitch to move laterally (X and Y axis) and rotate.
I think I could design the motor / servo control in LabView. but I need two things;
1. translation from the 12 channel RC receiver to the NXT. I have seen RC transmitters hacked to xbee pros and then from xbee pro to arduino to servo controller etc. Looks messy and requires coding.
2. control of the RC motors from the NXT. This might already work but I have not seen this for sure. I found a reference to an 8 channel servo break-out board from Mindsensors but don't think this would control standard RC motor ESCs??? Is there position feedback on this (assuming the servo and motor support this)?
I think someone could do this all through xbees and arduinos but I want to keep this all going through the NXT so I can control and evolve the parameters (behavior) though LabView in the future, especially with the EV3 coming out. Once it is flying I might want the props to pitch out of a corner based on flight speed to turn sharper and still keep the frame level. I could easily add flight paths, autopilot (programmed through LabView), more inexpensive NXT sensors like GPS, barometer, long range IR, etc.
I can't believe that nobody has done this yet. Anyone? Lego Technic has two RC buggies. Would these have an RC receiver to NXT interface built in? Just swap out the transmitter and receiver for longer range an more channels?
An FPV camera / viewer could easily be a separate independent device in the future so I don't need high band width, just low latency for 12 channels over about a mile.
Any advice is welcome.
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