459MHz UHF legal Tx and Rx - Arduino based programability.

[simondale]

Haha very nice :)
you will need a 3.3v FTDI cable. Think u can gwt one cheap from coolcomponents or even ebay.  I'll post a guide on how to program the thing later on :)

Mihai.

I just ordered this: http://www.skpang.co.uk/catalog/ftdi-basic-breakout-5v-p-442.html  Is that wrong or is the 3.3v FTDI cable that you mentioned in addition to that?  This is all new to me :-)

[thundead]

Should do the trick. Just remembered that im not powering the lrs from the ftdi cable so its all good :)

Cheers,
Mihai

[pk-surfing]

Fortunately I ordered my 3.3v FTDI breakout board from Flytron when I ordered the LRS.

My FY worked perfectly straight out of the box, even the pots didn't need adjusting.

I have it in a SW and it is mounted on the dampening cradle that comes with the FY and I have the FY attached to the cradle with velcro, the whole thing is very well damped and I made sure all connecting leads to the FY had some free length on them so they did not transfer vibration to the unit.

The thing I like about the FY is how well it holds altitude as it uses a mix of on board barometric information and GPS to decide how high it is, rather than just GPS.

The two things I hate about it and FY should be ashamed of the first...

1) no provision for displaying rssi data when used with the 117 OSD
2) no tracking information

and to throw another thing in

3) no ability to change units from metric on any of the altimeter, speed, distance etc

PK

[thundead]

The thing that annoys me most is no throttle control. If you don't setup throttle with rtl when failsafe it will be bad haha. But good thing frsky and openlrs has fs on all ch :)
mihai.

[pk-surfing]

Yew that lack of throttle linked to ground speed would be good.

I must admit I now test that failsafe works before each flying session by holding the plane and turning the transmitter off to make sure the motor goes to half throttle.

PK

[ORCA]

I also got the email and ordered a set, plus the Futaba adaptor.  I'm looking forward to giving this stuff a go.

I also ordered one of the Turnigy 9x radios which can be re-flashed with an open source firmware.  The OpenLRS will fit right into that.

I also ordered an Open Pilot Copter Control yesterday as well!  Yesterday seems to have been open source day for me!!

Now where are the details of the programmer jobby I need to go with the OpenLRS.  In this thread somewhere I believe.

http://www.rcgroups.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1338412

Have a read through this thread and get the 'Sartieparts' board and back light kit. Then load with the custom firmware.
HTH

[ORCA]

Firmware link

http://code.google.com/p/er9x/

HTH

[simondale]

Firmware link

http://code.google.com/p/er9x/

HTH

Great!  Thanks!

You prefer er9x to the other 9x firmware projects then?

[simondale]

I also got the email and ordered a set, plus the Futaba adaptor.  I'm looking forward to giving this stuff a go.

I also ordered one of the Turnigy 9x radios which can be re-flashed with an open source firmware.  The OpenLRS will fit right into that.

I also ordered an Open Pilot Copter Control yesterday as well!  Yesterday seems to have been open source day for me!!

Now where are the details of the programmer jobby I need to go with the OpenLRS.  In this thread somewhere I believe.

http://www.rcgroups.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1338412

Have a read through this thread and get the 'Sartieparts' board and back light kit. Then load with the custom firmware.
HTH

Awesome!  I love the custom board with "pogo-pins".  Don't even have to solder to the board!  Fantastic!  Thanks Orca.

[TeeJay]

Good luck finding a Smartieparts board,t hey never seem to be available anywhere

[ORCA]

I believe the next production run is in September - get in quick. The way they sell out indicates how good they are, although the 'pogo-pins' can sometimes be problematic.

[Devonian]

I think the reason a lot of this stuff is sold out quickly is that most people are sick and tired of expensive, propritery hardware & closed source software that very often doesn't work with another bit of expensive hardware.

Open source supported hardware is going to get big in the future, in my opinion.

Just take a look at the OpenPilot CopterControl boards, OpenLRS etc that are selling like hot cakes now as more people take up the idea of open source and the ability to link it all together.

Nigel.

[thundead]

Hey everyone. been crazy @ work but finally took a few days off to continue my openLRS endeavors.

Just a quick insight in what I'm currently working on:




---------------
Stuff so far:

Got GPS to transmit lat, lon and altitude over telemetry. Was quite tricky because I wanted max precision on the coordinates so I'm sending the data as 12 byte encoded floats, 4 bytes per reading.

Figured out the pan/tilt servo movements. Works great in theory (bench tested using google maps yaay).

I'll be using my arduino mega board as groundstation.

-------------

Still to do:
Link up the mega with the openLRS tx: I've got a couple of Xbees so I'll try to use that.

Add lcd screen

finally, make DIY PCB with voltage divider (show ground station battery status on LCD) and some buttons for set home and who knows what.

------------
I'll keep u posted on my progress and release full code etc when I'll get closer to finishing the tracker :D
----------

Quick question though, what do u think, should I do the calculations on the mega or on the LRS tx and send only pan,tilt via serial to mega ?

Any thoughts, ideas on what else to include in the design let me know :D

-------

Cheers,
Mihai.

[pk-surfing]

'' Any thoughts ''

Yes.... your enthusiasm made me get the OpenLRS transmitter and rec plus the tiny usb connecting board thingy (everything delivered last week)

Now I have to figure out what to do with it all !!   ;)

:funfunfun:

PK

[thundead]

Yaaay :)
I promise to put up a guide tomorrow.

Its terminator 3 for me now  ;D

Mihai.