I need a Tx...

belowtheradar wrote: Just in case you haven't completed your order yet:

I just stumbled upon your last replies and noticed that you'll be using a Naze32 FC.

In this case, I recommend you get a satellite Rx such as the OrangeRx R110x instead:
www.hobbyking.com/hobbyking/store/__4663...llite_Receiver_.html
This will give you more channels with less weight and space.

Yep, goods ordered and sent - HobbyKing are nice and fast in that respect

So, I'm not sure what that satellite does - it a receiver in its own right, or do you have to use it conjunction with something else, as the term "satellite" infers?

THanks for the info

A satellite is a receiver, usually to be used as an additional receiver to get improved reception and redundancy.
The difference is, that it needs 3.3V (instead of 5V) and has only one port which is normally connected to your
main receiver. However, you can use it as a standalone device with your Naze32.

I don`t know why you people are so keen on using these satellite receivers.
You occupy one UART ( e.g. CC3D UART1 ) that could be used for other equipment.

What equipment?

Bluetooth..? Sonar...? OSD...? OLED..?
..

aMax wrote: I don`t know why you people are so keen on using these satellite receivers.
You occupy one UART ( e.g. CC3D UART1 ) that could be used for other equipment.

I'm not a big fan of using satellite's stand alone (no telemetry support), but it's a size/weight/price thing. They are usually smaller/lighter/cheaper than Rx's from the same company.

And while they use a UART, you have to use at least one input no matter what you do. Whether or not you need the extra flexibility of a uart will depend on what you're doing. But if the size/weight thing are important, you aren't likely to need the extra UART.

So I got my Devo 7e and have installed Deviation on it. I see that the screen shows 150mW. Is that the actual output as is, or do I still need to do the diode mod?
Also, I don't seem to be able to change the output power....?

So be aware, its only round about 7mW in real live....(without mod)...regardless whether or not showing 150 mW.
With my DSMX R615X and range mod, I have flown with my quad with 100mW setting at LOS in a circle of 220m and with FPV cam up to 270m with no problems.
But after adding a 808#16 cam on the quad, I could not reach this range without the 150mW setting. Interference.....
some foil around the cam made it work again,.... but without a good feeling.
In the end I changed the rx for a long range one with two long antennas and filters. The range test was quite satisfying.

Hence with this small output power, be careful with gear and range.

mwm wrote: [............. depend on what you're doing. But if the size/weight thing are important, you aren't likely to need the extra UART.

That's true, of course.

aMax wrote: So be aware, its only round about 7mW in real live....(without mod)...regardless whether or not showing 150 mW.
With my DSMX R615X and range mod, I have flown with my quad with 100mW setting at LOS in a circle of 220m and with FPV cam up to 270m with no problems.
But after adding a 808#16 cam on the quad, I could not reach this range without the 150mW setting. Interference.....
some foil around the cam made it work again,.... but without a good feeling.
In the end I changed the rx for a long range one with two long antennas and filters. The range test was quit satisfying.

Hence with this small output power, be careful with gear and range.

Cool thanks

I have some conductive ink coming which I'll use to short the diode...

Depends on how carefully you do this. Since it is a resitor that stays into place and not a diode, the calculation for parallel resitors becomes important...
Therefore clean the solder joints before applying the ink.

aMax wrote: Depends on how carefully you do this. Since it is a resitor that stays into place and not a diode, the calculation for parallel resitors becomes important...
Therefore clean the solder joints before applying the ink.

Thanks, I'll be very careful!

More questions:
For those using the Devo 7e with quads, what are the stock switches being used for?
Is it worth doing the switch mod? If so what are the extra switches being used for?

Thanks

I no longer use a 7E (swapped it out for a 6S a while back), but have. And the 6S has the same set of switches as the 7E with the 2x3 mod. I swapped mine out before the 2x3 mod was created, because the two switches on the 7E aren't really adequate for what I do with small 'copters. What you use the switches for varies depending on what equipment is on the quad, and the capabilities of the flight control board.

The one thing you absolutely, without a doubt, must have in all cases is a throttle hold switch. Should be a dedicated switch that kills the engines and prevents the blades from spinning. This is a safety feature in two ways: first, you turn it on before working on the quad, so that someone accidentally bumping the throttle doesn't spin the props while your fingers are in the way. For smaller props, this prevents pain, but I know people who have lost fingers to larger props, so it's a good habit to get into.

Second, most of the energy in the thing comes from the motors. If you shut them off just before you crash, you'll lower the damage to the quad and anything that it hits. While lowering the throttle to zero will do the right thing on many 'copters, it won't on all of them, so you want to develop the habit of hitting throttle hold before a crash, not just lowering the throttle.

So, one switch dedicated to throttle hold. If the flight controller has some kind of initialization sequence, use this switch to init the FC in one direction, and shut it down in the other.

Other things typically include flight modes if your aircraft has them. On toy-grade quads, that's typically enable/disable flip. On hobby-grade flight controllers, you can have stabilization on/off, "horizon" mode, acrobatic mode, and so on. If your flight controller has any kind of auto-leveling capability, it's easy to create a "Panic" switch that just brings it back to level (make it the safety switch on AIL & ELE outputs, safety output of zero and have it set the flight mode channel to auto-level). If you have a GPS-equipped quad, it probably has return-to-home, so you want a switch for that.

A lot of people like multiple rates, which isn't quite the same thing. The flight mode things will control your flight envelope by limiting the bank angle on the cyclics; rates on the Tx change how fast you get to those end points. I'm not a big fan of them, but tend to set up a high rate that's 100% with an expo of 35, and a low rate that's 70%. This gives me the same sensitivity near the center, but the high rates let me reach maximum speed at the ends of the throw.

Then there's equipment. Got lights you can turn on and off? Give them a switch. Camera control is usually better on buttons, so I tend to take a trim switch and have up start/stop video and down stake stills

Bottom line, yes, you probably want more switches. The 7E was designed as an entry-level heli controller for Walkera's low-end helis, so that's all it's really set up to control. It's workable for most quads, but you'll probably outgrow it pretty quickly. The other issue that these being mostly plane & heli Tx's is that the button labels (and the icons in deviation, blast it) don't really go 1-1 with the functionality on a multirotor. So there aren't really any standards for what to do with the switches. Or rather, which switch maps to which functionality.

mwm wrote: throttle hold switch

Actually that was one of my biggest beefs going from the 7E to a 6s; both outer switches on the 6s are 3-position, meaning they are a pain for throttle hold! I think half the time for copters I end up setting both MIX down positions to throttle hold so I don't miss it with a wrong flick. Shouldn't need to reach inside another switch to get to your throttle hold!
I guess I could physically rearrange them....

One a side note, I haven't tried them yet but have heard good things about LemonRX for a cheaper DSM2 / DSMX solution. You used to be able to get $6 OrangeRX DSM2 receivers, but now it's a minimum of like $14. LemonRX are about $6, and their shipping is very cheap (not quite dirt cheap, more healthy topsoil... sorry, been landscaping recently )

mwm wrote: I no longer use a 7E (swapped it out for a 6S a while back), but have. And the 6S has the same set of switches as the 7E with the 2x3 mod. I swapped mine out before the 2x3 mod was created, because the two switches on the 7E aren't really adequate for what I do with small 'copters. What you use the switches for varies depending on what equipment is on the quad, and the capabilities of the flight control board.

The one thing you absolutely, without a doubt, must have in all cases is a throttle hold switch. Should be a dedicated switch that kills the engines and prevents the blades from spinning. This is a safety feature in two ways: first, you turn it on before working on the quad, so that someone accidentally bumping the throttle doesn't spin the props while your fingers are in the way. For smaller props, this prevents pain, but I know people who have lost fingers to larger props, so it's a good habit to get into.

Second, most of the energy in the thing comes from the motors. If you shut them off just before you crash, you'll lower the damage to the quad and anything that it hits. While lowering the throttle to zero will do the right thing on many 'copters, it won't on all of them, so you want to develop the habit of hitting throttle hold before a crash, not just lowering the throttle.

So, one switch dedicated to throttle hold. If the flight controller has some kind of initialization sequence, use this switch to init the FC in one direction, and shut it down in the other.

Other things typically include flight modes if your aircraft has them. On toy-grade quads, that's typically enable/disable flip. On hobby-grade flight controllers, you can have stabilization on/off, "horizon" mode, acrobatic mode, and so on. If your flight controller has any kind of auto-leveling capability, it's easy to create a "Panic" switch that just brings it back to level (make it the safety switch on AIL & ELE outputs, safety output of zero and have it set the flight mode channel to auto-level). If you have a GPS-equipped quad, it probably has return-to-home, so you want a switch for that.

A lot of people like multiple rates, which isn't quite the same thing. The flight mode things will control your flight envelope by limiting the bank angle on the cyclics; rates on the Tx change how fast you get to those end points. I'm not a big fan of them, but tend to set up a high rate that's 100% with an expo of 35, and a low rate that's 70%. This gives me the same sensitivity near the center, but the high rates let me reach maximum speed at the ends of the throw.

Then there's equipment. Got lights you can turn on and off? Give them a switch. Camera control is usually better on buttons, so I tend to take a trim switch and have up start/stop video and down stake stills

Bottom line, yes, you probably want more switches. The 7E was designed as an entry-level heli controller for Walkera's low-end helis, so that's all it's really set up to control. It's workable for most quads, but you'll probably outgrow it pretty quickly. The other issue that these being mostly plane & heli Tx's is that the button labels (and the icons in deviation, blast it) don't really go 1-1 with the functionality on a multirotor. So there aren't really any standards for what to do with the switches. Or rather, which switch maps to which functionality.

Wow, awesome, thanks!

I had assigned a timer to one of the switches but can see the multiple uses

In running a Naze32 FC. Not 100% if it supports all those features you mentioned...

I'll also add that this is the first of two mini quads I'm building. This one is mine and once I've made all the mistakes I'll build another for my son. He likes the Devo Tx and so I think I'll give him that and I'll end going with an OrangeRx T-Six which has plenty of switches.

... And it has just dawned on me that each switch takes a channel above what the quad needs to fly. Is that correct?

So 4 switches would need an 8 channel rig?

Not in the slightest If you were so inclined, you could mux all four stick axes, 4 switches, two analogue dials, and trim switches down into only one channel! Or inversely you could have one stick axis created 12 entirely different channel outputs.
Though sometimes a heli, quad, or plane (or other) will have a channel dedicated purely to one switch (eg. flaps on a plane), the more common useage is to alter the content of a channel; eg. throttle hold to kill the throttle channel, dual-rates to alter the response of several different channels, modes to change to different throttle profiles, the list is endless.
Once you start exploring you realise that the possibilities can be endless with a bit of creative thinking; you can do stuff with deviation that would have been inconceivable in the past

PS. I haven't kept up with the 7E developments in some time, but a fair while ago there was talk of using trims and/or nav buttons as switches, which if that went ahead could be something to experiment with before getting ino hardware modification. I should really dust off my 7E and finally get Deviation onto it...

DoubleQuad wrote: ... And it has just dawned on me that each switch takes a channel above what the quad needs to fly. Is that correct?

So 4 switches would need an 8 channel rig?

No. Switches can either change the state of a channel directly, change the behavior of the radio, or both. For instance, a light control switch probably uses a channel, though a lot of the toy-grade quads hack those into unused bits in other channels. On the other hand, throttle hold just locks the Tx throttle output to -100. And the flight mode switch on a 3d heli might change the throttle and pitch curves as well as using a channel to set the gyro.

Going the other way, multiple switches can be mapped to a single channel. The Blade 200QX has 5 flight modes (AP, Smart, Stability, Agility and RTH) set with a single channel. I ignore Smart mode, set AP/Stability/Agility with the flight mode switch, and use the Gear switch to enable RTH.

The thing to realize is that "channels" on a Tx is a marketing term. The Devo 7E is sold as a 7-channel radio, even though it's only got two switches. That's because Walkera puts their gyro control on channel 7, so they have to give you a 7-channel radio. But as Deviation shows, the hardware can do more channels - they just don't want to cannibalize sales of their other radios. Other radio manufacturers are no better. On the Rx end, it's a bit better: the number of servo connectors is a real limit. Except that with things like CPPM and SBUS, those 4-channel Rx's can handle 6 or 8 or more devices, and so need to get more channels.

BTW, once you get used to deviation, you may find proprietary radios like the Orange T-six limiting. Or you may find it a lot easier to use. Be warned that it's certainly radically different from deviation!

RoGuE_StreaK wrote: Not in the slightest If you were so inclined, you could mux all four stick axes, 4 switches, two analogue dials, and trim switches down into only one channel! Or inversely you could have one stick axis created 12 entirely different channel outputs.
Though sometimes a heli, quad, or plane (or other) will have a channel dedicated purely to one switch (eg. flaps on a plane), the more common useage is to alter the content of a channel; eg. throttle hold to kill the throttle channel, dual-rates to alter the response of several different channels, modes to change to different throttle profiles, the list is endless.
Once you start exploring you realise that the possibilities can be endless with a bit of creative thinking; you can do stuff with deviation that would have been inconceivable in the past

PS. I haven't kept up with the 7E developments in some time, but a fair while ago there was talk of using trims and/or nav buttons as switches, which if that went ahead could be something to experiment with before getting ino hardware modification. I should really dust off my 7E and finally get Deviation onto it...

*gulp*

So, I'm slowly starting to get my head around this stuff. Clearly there is a LOT for to learn!

I'm a programmer by trade so thinking outside the box comes with the territory. Plus I love a challenge

So if you can MUX channels together on the Tx what do you need to do at the other end to deMUX?