Wishlist for a custom Transmitter board

I would like my transmitter shape similar to the ps3 joystick or joy pad

It would be nice to have connectors for gimbals, a standard array of switches, trims and a couple of pots. This would make retrofitting somewhat standard and less complicated and facilitate tinkering.

Additional pins could be broken out for other more customized uses

i actually ordered an stm32f103zet6 dev board, I've already flashed the u7e bootloader and loaded the usb drive on the computer to test functionality, but that's as far as I've got as I'm waiting for an lcd screen to arrive before I start trying anything else, I'm not the best at coding, most definitely a newb tbh, but I'm in no rush so however long it takes me to get deviation working with these 2 is no problem, it will be a nice learning experience: D

here's the dev board I bought m.aliexpress.com/item/32337203632.html

and the tft lcd www.ebay.co.uk/itm/272041590817

Harry! thank you for all your work
I love you
why put so much effort and money on the 7e?
touch screen too small is not pratical to use

heh I'm not doing any work, merely repurposing the work of others lol.

erm, I love you too ?

I like making stuff, messing around with electronics etc and this dev board and screen are mainly intended to deviate my dsm9x not go into my 7e, and I don't really plan on using the touch screen, it's just that it's difficult to find a nice screen in this size without one, though this screen wont actually fit the dsm9x so it's more as a proof of concept

ZOOCOCO wrote: I would like my transmitter shape similar to the ps3 joystick or joy pad

This is not at all what the thread is about but just pointing out; you can already use a USB PS3 controller to have control of your quad / plane using APM. Mission planner is able to accept and USB joystick (PS2 / PS3 controllers included) and send the rc control data over the MAVlink connection. You don't actually need a standard 2G4 transmitter / receiver at all.

Fernandez wrote: Just came across the top model Transmitter from Jr, it is an android controlled Tx. Price 2600usd!!!! OughF www.jramericas.com/234048/JRP01050/?pcat=2

But the idea could be interesting also for the future deviation, basically use a small ARM development board to connect the hardware Tx modules and all inputs, switches and then use a cheap android tablet or phone as control and display for Tx. There are already chinese models available from 50bucks..... We get then a lot of features directly and can keep the hardware setup more simple.

Speakers, Mp3
Vibrator
GPS
Touchscreen color
Bluettooth/Wifi/3G
Plenty of storage memory for logging etc.

Only downside is to start your tx, must, boot start the app etc, might take bit longer, complicated, less easy etc.

This is exactly what I am planning to do now:
- Get a STM32 Dev Board (without display?)
- Remove the GUI from deviation
- Connect 4in1 TX module to the Dev Board
- Connect inputs from old transmitter to the Dev Board
- Connect the serial line from the Dev Board to Android phone. Either by usb serial or bluetooth.
- Write Android app

I am not yet sure what hardware Deviation needs to run.
Do I need a SPI flash?

ZOOCOCO wrote: I would like my transmitter shape similar to the ps3 joystick or joy pad

I'm in! One of the reason i went for 7e is that there is no transmitter in such a small factor. I wanted to have something ultratiny to take with me on holidays. If i had a ps3 like tx with 7e functionalities in such a small factor i'd be more than happy. Maybe that's the way to design a board that would fit inside and we could have the orygnal "or clone" gutted out? Joysticks are there, there is plenty buttons? The only thing that's missing is a small lcd to know what's going on but... Probably i clould live without it and set it via sim on PC or something.

HappyHarry - How is your project coming on?
I am wanting to put a "Deviation ready" board into a what I think is a quality piece of hardware but sadly that is crippled with crummy software and low frequency and an antenna that possibly needs planning permission and guy ropes on windy days

Have you documented any of this anywhere so that I may see if I am capable of seeing such a project through to a conclusion?

Regards
Rob

I've not gotten much farther along than installing deviation to the board and soldering up the screen etc as I'd been busy with uni exams, now i'm starting to research/write my thesis so fun projects are on the back burner

once I get back to it I'll post a thread or blog somewhere to record my findings but I can't say when that will be atm bud

Brilliant, hope all goes well for you
I have subscribed to the thread so hopefully will get pings for any updates on here

The TX I want to Deviate (WFly WFT09) has not been touched for many many months and is not going anywhere

It is a very similar physical size and the the screen size and locations is almost the same as my Devo 10, has a load more buttons and sliders and pots (4x 2way 2x 3way 1x momentary and 3x rotary pots and 2x shoulder pots)
9x front panel navigation switches!

The case front appears to be cast alloy
gimbals feel silky smooth and it feels like quality hardware (too good for the bin)

It seems to take Futaba compatible plug in modules from what I have read
cpu on the board is an atmega 128l and there /seems/ plenty of room in her
Shame the software it comes with it is no where near as functional as Deviation

Whatever board I can get in there - it will need to handle a lot of inputs

Regards
Rob

I can't get this idea out of my head ...and being that I am not that experienced...but am familiar with which end of the soldering iron gets hot, I have so many questions I need to answer but unable to self serve as far as finding answers

IF I were to get a discovery board....(Have found them at less than £30, which I can afford, BUT I can't think of any other good reason why I would need one other than for this project)

Would the process be similar to
Flash the Walkera bootloader (the one for the ultimate 7e 256)
Flash it with deviation from either the 7e ultimate (or Devo 10?)
Wire the hardware up (Gimbals/pots/switches/RF boards)

Or will I need to get a special Bootloader and compile/roll my own Deviation for it?
Thinking about it deeper - would the screen even work without me writing my own code?

Assuming I have not incredibly over simplified this (a likely scenario)
How tolerant of potentiometer values is this going to be?
(will the hardware need "conditioning" in any way or maybe being quite specific values)
.....eg could I join the queue on hype train central and get some hall effect gimbals


Cereal Killer - Hows that board coming along?
Could be the best solution to my quest (and I'll buy 3 if they are ready )

Regards
Rob

Gimbals, switches, RF board(s), SD card, trainer serial port, LCD display, etc.

I don't think you need to flash a Devo bootloader. All it does is let you update the firmware via USB. The discovery boards have ST/LINK built into them to do that, so you don't need a bootloader at all. If you want to use Walkera's firmware or a standard deviation distribution, you'd need it. Maybe. Getting an image that can be flashed with the ST/LINK is at most a one-character change in the software; it may even be produced as part of the build process (I'd have to check).

If you want to use a discovery board, you probably want custom firmware anyway - they come with hardware you might want to use but probably not what's in the Devo, or necessarily wired up the same way.

If you really just want a 7E clone, you don't want a discovery board. Better to get something like a Maple mini for about US $6. None of that extra hardware and has the same µ-cu as the 7e.

Thanks for getting back to me and helping clear things up a bit

That board looks very small and neat and would be workable - can be had crazy cheap!

A board that could run 7e ultimate code would be even more suitable for the amount of switches and pots the potential donor case and hardware has

I'm tempted to buy one at the price they can be had and potentially sacrifice it in the name of practicing connecting taps to the legs and then a cpu swap to see if my old 7e can be 4 in 1 RF board and '256 ultimated' by me!

Are there any available schematics to show what goes where on a 7e? or even a list of pins to physical TX hardware?

Screen wise - does the 7e ultimate code have output for OLED?

I'm sure I saw a post ages ago with an image of the display being shown on a wee OLED (possibly even a 128x64 - I used one recently for a VRX mod I followed through to a working item!...proving it is easy when you are spoon fed the code and given a proven recipe )

I could live with a small display (as long as I retain the ability to write and edit the ini's via the PC and transfer via USB)
I don't /really/ need a screen beyond needing to know battery voltage and which model I have selected

Haptic feedback I have never used, a beeper would suffice if the voice builds could not be got working

an ultimate 7e "board" could do the trick very nicely as long as it's broken out for all the pins I need... to a coarse ish scale (through hole please )

I did do the range mod successfully without killing anything, but doing a cpu swapout or trying to tap into the unused pins on it are beyond my confidence levels - certainly on my fave TX that gets used several times daily!

Would be even better if I could re-use the screen in the potential donor's TX
(Wishful thinking and showing my ignorance from playing with Lego and old Ford cars?...same thing aimed at different age groups )

Regards
Rob

www.deviationtx.com/wiki/hardware/devo7e
Do you mean this information in the Wiki?

You really should check on the 7E ultimate thread for info on the 7E hardware. I haven't looked at it in a while - I swapped my 7E for a 6S long ago, and haven't really been following it. But I think the answer is they use the stock display, and it has a discrete connector so moving it to your own board shouldn't be that hard.

To me, the hard part is the case & other hardware. So a more interesting approach would be to rip most of the electronics out of a cheap donor Tx and put one of these STM sticks it connected to that hardware. Someone did something similar with the th9x software at one point. I don't know if you can find a stick with the same CPU as the U-7E, but if not, at $5 each I'd order two and try the cpu swap on one!

One of the things I'd really like to do is move as much of the hardware configuration out of code and into hardware.ini as possible, with being able to do things like this being part of the goal. It took code changes to support extra switches on the 7E and 6S, and you have to wire them up to match the code. The RF modules are configured in hardware.ini, so when we found unused pins on the 6S and 10, we could use them with the existing builds and the right config. Since the switch connections are in an array in the code, it ought to be possible to load that array from hardware.ini to at least get the switches/buttons moved out.

Wene001 wrote: www.deviationtx.com/wiki/hardware/devo7e
Do you mean this information in the Wiki?

OMG! Awesome
Not sure why I didn't spot this (or why when I was searching It didn't suggest it)
Massive help thanks

mwm, I'm on it - 2x 'ARM Cortex-M3 Leaflabs Leaf Maple Mini Module STM32 for Arduino' ordered to play with/practice on (...in about a months time when they get here!)
Total cost £6.46 and 2x STM32 F103RCT6 for a whopping £ 2.96...again its going to be a while till they land on these shores

I already have a donor TX to stick it all into, hardware seems pretty skookum, but the software on it totally sucks

If it doesn't work out I'll not be too sad as the TX came free with a heli and has just sat gathering dust as its 35Mhz and my garden isn't big enough to put the aerial up in...at least not without planning permission (how did the old timers cope?)

Moving configurable stuff into hardware.ini sounds like a really neat idea (as a non programmer/end user) as it /should/ give us the ultimate flexibility without needing a steep learning curve

Plenty for me to chew on for sure, thanks once again gents

Regards
Rob

Also just ordered 2x SST25VF016B 2MB SPI NOR Flash chips ..as I may actually get round to needing them

For the screen - does it just have to be NT7538 compatible and able to display 128x64?
Or does it HAVE to be a TG12864Z?

Well the excitement was short lived
Turns out the Leaf Maple boards I ordered are not the right ones (counted the pins and there are only 12 per side...so epic fail on that one...not 64 pin)
Back to the drawing board

I have 2 boards ordered that /should/ work - same STM chip as the 7e (RBT6) and the other is the 256k version (RCT6)

I also have some flash chips on their way

Have been looking through the 7e hardware on the wiki
and have some rather basic questions still

The power switch...
It says GPIO A

2 output to 0 to shut off Tx
3 power-switch in 'off' position (goes high on 'off')

so on my powerswitch 'physically' I use it to permanently apply a voltage to GPIOA pin 3 to give it the command to save and shutdown?
(5v via a pulldown resistor?) -
Conversely to turn it back on I need to ground the GPIO pin 3 for the duration I want the TX to be on?

what do I do with GPIOA pin2?
(ground it for off and pull it high via a pullup to turn it on?)

Is there a schematic showing the physical arrangement to make this work to aid me getting my head round this?


For the Screen I /think/ I have found one that could be suitable
128x64 - NT7538 controller 64.5x37 viewing area - so about the same viewing size as the Devo 10 - and its not that expensive at £19.99
( cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=111767262708 )
I have messaged the seller for more details on the connections
Hoping its something I can solder direct to rather than a plastic film type push connector that I will need to try and find a suitable header for

Thanks in advance
Regards
Rob

Seller has got back to me with the specs of the screen I was looking at


...and I'm completely lost as it looks nothing like the NT7538 data sheet

Looking at SadSack's posting ages ago (2013!) - he mentions PB catered for other screens in the code
and there is a video of how setup with a small SSD1306 and mentions he had to alter some code and add some components
The video showed some extra wires coming from the SSD1306 screen - willing to try it as they are cheap enough

I have tried to contact him to see if he documented further anywhere, but he doesn't appear to have been on here for a while

Is there a simple diagram or recipe for this anywhere?

Regards
Rob

I don't believe so - adding new display types doesn't happen very often. It should be straightforward. The UI code looks like it's based on some mini-guil library, and each LCD only needs a few routines like set_pixel.

As I've said numerous times, I'm interested in moving as much of the hardware config as possible into the hardware.ini file. Getting the display there is on the list, and should also be straightforward: an array of structs, each of which holds pointers to those routines. I'd be interested in writing a driver for your SSD1306 in that mold (meaning not suitable for the Devo7E µcu), but you'd have to talk me into finding the time, which probably won't be easy on either side. And you'd have to test it...