An OSD alternative

OK this is half joke, half serious. This is a quick idea I had for the autopilot/FPV unit I'm building. I don't have an OSD and I'm afraid of investing an extra 300+ on a plane that will be going through flight tests in a week. I also don't have Xbee radios nor am I interested in staring at my laptop while my plane flies around. Especially when I've spent so much time on the FPV gear. Here's my lame/fun idea: I picked up a Speech Jet chip that I will wire into the microphone input of my Range Video 900Mhz transmitter. I'm sending out SW Serial through a free pin on the ArduPilot to call out waypoints, heading, altitude, speed, etc.Here's an un-amplified recording. The audio into the transmitter should be pristine when it's done.Play AAC fileBreadboard:

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Comments

lionel September 23, 2009 at 1:28am

Very interesting addition of an audio channel to relay some information should also help unclutter the MMI on the computer too.
Paul Mather September 22, 2009 at 5:31pm

If you already have a GPS that can do NMEA, you can get a Remzibi "Poor Man's" OSD for about $75.
Remzibi Thread on RCG
But don't let that stop your creativity! Good job on a new spin to the OSD!
Jason Larocque September 22, 2009 at 6:44am

It sounds just like a critical alert in a real cockpit !!!
Nice work !
I'll try to incorporate speach messages on my OSD ! (on computer...)
tycinis September 22, 2009 at 5:54am

Nice works
Mike September 22, 2009 at 5:50am

Nice!
Developer

Jason Short September 22, 2009 at 12:00am

There is something nice about the audio coming directly from the plane. No PC required. It's like WOPR is flying it.
wurpfel September 21, 2009 at 11:27pm

Hi...good idee!
But in windows you will find the handicaped-allow-functions how reed out a text-string.
on my eeePC its working very fine ;-)

This reply was deleted.