RC System Hardware.
RC System Firmware.

Overview.

Ever since playing with a 2 channel glider as a kid I have always wanted to build another RC aircraft.
Combine this with my hobby of building robots and this was always going to be an unusual project.

When i started reading about RC aircraft it surprised me there were no commercial systems that provide 2 way communication to allow sensor data to be returned from the aircraft.
Even if a user has no interest in knowing what height and how fast they are going a built in signal strength meter and battery monitor are undeniably useful.

This project's aim is to build a bidirectional RC system which can interface a wide variety of sensors, actuators, input devices and data monitors.
These sensors and inputs will be able to be mixed and output in any combination.
Outputs will be either on conventional servos and motor controllers but also on a display at the controller end as well as any of the other I/O methods available to a microcontroller.

Who Can Build this?

Anyone with a reasonable amount of experience with programming AVR microcontrollers should be able to get this working from my instructions here.
With a little programming experience it should be possible to modify the code to your own purposes.
It is definitely not suitable as a beginners project though.

Discussion Of This Project.

If you have questions or are interested in others questions about this project see the following forum threads:
RC related: http://www.rcgroups.com/forums/showthread.php?t=971053
Robotics/UAV related: http://www.societyofrobots.com/robotforum/index.php?topic=6224
If you need to contact me directly: mrdunk(at)gmail.com but i will not provide answers to questions that have already been covered here.

Progress So Far.

In it's current state it is a fully functional RC system but so far only unidirectional.

I ran into severe problems diagnosing intermittent packet loss, particularly when exposed to other 2.4GHz signals.
This turned out to be caused by omissions in the documentation of the Unigen LETO-LPA WirelessUSB(TM) Radio Modules i am using.
See the RC System Hardware page for more details.

Next on the ToDo list is bidirectional communication between the Controller and the Remote.


Early testing.



Firmware V1 in flight.
Pilot in need of training.