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Futaba FASST Receivers, and connection to ATMega, ArduPilot etc.

Posted by Ed Hall on January 30, 2010 at 1:22pm
I saw a post about connecting the output of Futaba FASST receivers to Autopilots, and grabbing the whole data stream.

Can I connect a PPM output directly into on of the input PWM pins on an a chip such as the ATMega1280?

I though that FASST, was not a PPM/PCM protocol.

Is there a starting point, or what pin should I connect to on a Futaba 6014FS FASST receiver?

I would like to grab the data stream from the receiver, and then based upon conditions control LED's.

Where would a good starting point or articles etc on how to hook to the Futaba reciever be?


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Replies

  • 13brv3 January 30, 2010 at 7:41pm
    For the FASST 6 and 7 channel receivers, you can solder a wire inside to get the first 5 channels of PPM, but channels 6 and 7 are not in PPM sequence. If you need more than 5 channels in the PPM stream, you'll need a PPM encoder.

    The 8 and 14 channel FASST receivers are right out, and don't have any PPM order hidden inside. If you plan to use one of those, you'll definitely have to use a converter.

    Rusty
  • 3D Robotics
    Chris Anderson January 30, 2010 at 3:45pm
    FASST, like all other RX receivers, outputs PWM. The PPM/PCM you discuss is an internal protocal used on some older receivers, but no longer a common standard in RC. You can connect PWM out to any PWM Arduino/Atmega pin and read it. For simple testing pulsein() is sufficient, but in practice it doesn't work (consumes all your processing power and still misses most pulses), so you'll want to use custom routines like we use in ArduPilot.

    An easier method is to use our PPM encoder board, which turns PWM back into PPM, which the Atmega can read very efficiently.
  • Curt Olson January 30, 2010 at 2:47pm
    The way the ardupilot is designed is that you connect each receiver channel individually to the ardupilot. The ardupilot decodes the individual pwm signals (i.e. the signal that is sent to control a single servo.) This way the ardupilot is compatible with just about any receiver that can drive a standard servo.

    By default I believe the firmware and board layout is setup to be able to only decode 2 channels from your receiver (plus you can sense the state of the manual/auto switch on your receiver.)

    However, I discovered by soldering a couple jumper wires and hacking the firmware, you can actually decode 4 channels from your receiver (and drive 4 output servos) along with sensing the state of your manual/auto selection switch.

    I'm looking forward to the ardu-mega-pilot which will have even more IO capability.

    Regards,

    Curt.
    servo.by
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