Hi, I am attempting to have a spektrum DX6i controller communicate with my APM 2.5 board for a hardware in the loop simulation/ actual flying. However, after looking in the forums and such I could not find a way to convert the serial that the transmitter receives into the PPM that The APM 2.5 needs. Can anybody help??
Devin Braatz
Replies
I'm fairly new to this and I haven't gotten HIL up and running yet, but as I understand it you would transmit as normal from your DX6i to a Spektrum receiver. The receiver would be connected to "Inputs" on the APM 2.5 board as you would for actually flying.
From there the AMP 2.5 board would communicate with Mission Planner on your computer through either USB or the 3DR telemetry set.
I don't know for sure, but it seems like it should be possible to use a USB PPM adapter (like this) to connect the trainer port of your radio to USB and configure it as a joystick in Mission Planner.
Here's some more HIL specific instructions
http://copter.ardupilot.com/wiki/hil-quad/
It seems like the APM 2.5 takes data (position, airspeed, etc.) from the sim program and uses it as if it was coming from the sensors on the board. It's processing the data, basically being fooled into thinking it's actually flying.
Hope this helps. I'll be playing with HIL next week once I get caught up with my tricopter, which I shipped ahead to CA for vacation. I'm using a CRIUS AIOP at the moment, so some things are a little different.
Don