I've been wondering if it would be possible to combine all of these into one simple solution?
I'm in the market for a new transmitter and have been searching around.
The transmitter that I am currently considering is the Turnigy 9x, not because it's build quality is great or anything, but it's cheap and I can't really care to much to hack it to bits.
http://www.hobbycity.com/hobbycity/store/uh_viewItem.asp?idProduct=... <
It has a few nifty bits i do like for the price.
For the transmitter module itself... The cream of the crop/pie...
A new module from FrSky claiming to have a 2way comm buit-in... A simple serial interface on the receiver that tramsmits back to the transmitter. The receiver also has 2 ADC ports that can be set to monitor almost anything. There is no speak about the baudrate of the serial lines but this would eliminate a lot of users' need for extra Xigbee's... > http://www.frsky-rc.com/News_View.asp?NewsID=12 < From previous reviews of their products, they seem to be up to par...
So... The big idea... Hack the transmitter(Cheap 9x) as to use the transmitters own lcd screen to display the same info as the Ardustation. This would still require a extra Atmel chip to decode the serial string sent to the transmitter, and would also need the transmitter to be hacked to use the screen for both the transmitter and Groundstation. I do believe that this would be possible...
A nicely (cheap) tied solution for the simple day to day UAV or fpv pilot.
Sorry for the lack of Pics but the links should suffice...
Please leave your ideas and if possible lets try and get it started!
Gerrit
South Africa
Replies
Excellent idea. I had a similar idea except less work was involved. Perhaps it could be part one of this project.
If you start out with a Turnigy 9x / FlySky / ergle / Radio and use an FrSky module in the transmitter for telemetry.
Use the telemetry connection to go to your external GCS, and use an unused channel in the transmitter to send data to the ardupilotmega.
This would make use of existing GCS solutions for now and replace only the XBee / Zigbee comm modules. That would be enough development work in itself, and provided it works reliably provide a springboard for modding the transmitter as a later project.
It actually makes sense since data is already being sent to the model via the transmitter, and with the telemetry module you already have two-way communication.