Discussions

Open Source Radio Control

Posted by Brad Powers on July 20, 2010 at 7:13pm

Hi everybody,

I've been thinking a bit about creating an open source radio control TX/RX system. I think that as a community, we can do better than what Spektrum/JR/Futaba/etc. have been putting out, and certainly do it for cheaper (adding two channels seems to double the price of a radio these days, which doesn't make sense). I've seen the Open Source Spektrum Receiver, and it's really excellent, but I think integrating something like that into a full system, potentially using the Arduino platform, could be very powerful. Thoughts?

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Replies

Developer

Jani Hirvinen July 20, 2010 at 8:48pm

Brad, you can find more technical information from their wiki/repository at http://code.google.com/p/th9x/

There are also links to other similar projects. Check it out.. it's rather good :)

And that radio.. Well I have one TGY 9X and also Futaba 7CAP.. I can say that TGY is way more better than Futte. Price for radio was about 60 US and Futte 400 US or so. Futte feels like a toy and TGY like a real radio. Ok I have minor problems with two switches on TGY. When hacking it it really does not matter, I can always replace those mode switches with new switches that costs 2 US :)
Brad Powers July 20, 2010 at 8:03pm

One thing that I'm thinking is that PPM is maybe not the best protocol for autopilot use. I was looking into the AR7000, and it appears that the satellite receiver communicates using a simple serial packet. Something like this could be very useful in an autopilot, as it would let you use your digital lines for something else, and instead only need to use a serial line of some sort (UART, SPI, I2C...)
3D Robotics

Chris Anderson July 20, 2010 at 7:58pm

There's already open source firmware for the Turnigy 2.4HGhz line. The stock gear has good (and very cheap) hardware, but terrible firmware, so an open source alternative makes sense. It uses an Atmega processor, so it's similar to Arduino. See this for more.