Build Tx with 3D printer, M9 Gimbal, Arduino board

I am thinking if we can build a new Tx from scratch that can install Deviation.

The most difficult part is solved with the nice M9 Gimbal, I think it maybe possible to work out a modular Universal Tx project based on deviation.

1. 3D printing casing (I will work this out)
2. M9 Gimbal (Already in the market)
3. logic board (did Arduino development boards works with deviation?)
4. LCD display (there are plenty of them out there for Arduino)
5. switches and knobs (should be easy to found)

Any suggestions or comments? Any useful discussion in the forum?

Print a casing??!! Its not looking good. In my opinion better buy a casing from teranis and put a M9 Gimbal. For example: Taranis cover https://www.flyingmachines.de/FrSky-Taranis-X9D-Plus-Cover_1

MacGyverek wrote: Print a casing??!! Its not looking good. In my opinion better buy a casing from teranis and put a M9 Gimbal. For example: Taranis cover https://www.flyingmachines.de/FrSky-Taranis-X9D-Plus-Cover_1

Much better idea!

But it would be worth contacting the few Chinese Manufacturers for a completely taylored setup instead of tinkering with inferior 3d printing and the like.
Sure the price could end up in the same range as the middle range Transmitters in the market. Bus as sure the quality could be far superior.
Once there is no "middleman" (in general there are several) you can end up here at a standard of Futaba Quality at Taranis prices.
But unfortunately I cannot provide any technical assistance. My skills in international trading were honed over 50 years of practice though. Maybe I could pay back for the support I received here.

Regards
Richard

I think the point is we need to have something works great first. 3D printing is good for prototyping and if there is market, we can always manufacture in China. 3D printing can help to speed the development, since it is cheap to modify the design anytime you want.

Well, although I don´t disagree, I would assume that it comes out much easier to just take a working system and mod. it. That way one can fall back on proven parts and must not reinvent the wheel.
(there was no offence intended!)
For which reason should one try to press a special gimbal into a case that does not fit? If it would be a one off, yes. But for a small series of high grade stuff it is much, much cheaper to go with a modded model from one of the very few manufacturers. (China)
I am dead sure, even the top notch transmitters from China leave the manufacturers door at or below 100 USD. Of course Futaba et al are a different kind of animal.
But even Futaba would seriously talk to you about a small series of TX when they don´t show the Futaba brand and do not look like siblings at a first glimpse.

A global market today allows for much more than we would have expected even 10 years ago.

When the brief SOR* is settled, I will happily step in to get it done.

Regards
Richard
* statement of requirements. Thats the point where every design spiral has to start! see an old description I provided ages ago:
www.boatdesign.net/forums/boat-design/de...ding-boat-28580.html

I personally like the idea of a full custom TX. With regards to formfactor I would like to see something similar to :
hobbyking.com/en_us/fpv-racer-radio-mode....html?___store=en_us
The possibly with some extra switches etc.
Arduino I think won't work, but there are other boards indeed.

Offtopic:
BTW, if you are good at designing printing/3D, I would love to see some kind of protection covers, so basically a thin sheet layer few mm, which fit on top of front of the tx, it must have the right curvatures to put sticks and switches. It can be kept in place with a rubber band.
That allow throw the TX into your bag etc without risk damaging the sticks, switches etc.
For me carrying a full box for the TX is a no go.

If I were wanting to build my own Tx, I think I would use the STM32F7 discovery for the guts. I think it has everything you would need (and them some) short of the gimbals, switches, and radio.

Take a look through the Wishlist for custom transmitter thread for a lot of discussion on the topic of dev boards for deviationTx.

The Arduino boards are in general a bad choice. First, we don't use the Arudino HAL (not being an educational project), so you don't get any advantage from it. Second, we use STM Cortex M3-based mcus. `The most popular Arduino boards - the Uno & Leonardo - have AVR cores that aren't up the job. There are some Cortex-based Arduino boards, but I don't know of any that use the STM chips, and it's not clear which of those libopencm3 (the HAL we use) has been ported to.

STM has their own line of dev boards that feature their chips. There have been a number of projects to port deviationTx to those boards that have gotten to the boot stage. The universalTx branch in the repository (not clear it made the move to git) may be the only one you can find now. They are generally cheaper than genuine Arduino even if you ignore getting a 32-bit >50Mhz cpu instead of an 8-bit <20Mhz cpu, though not as cheap as the chinese clones. There are also some gumstick form factor boards similar to the Arduino Mini and Micro. Some of these have arduino support from the stm32duino project if you really want it.

A while back I evaluated the STM dev boards for suitability as deviationTx targets. I'd be surprised if there aren't newer boards out since. I've attached it. It's actually markdown, but the extension has been changed to .txt to make the forum happy.

I just found a board in TaoBao that may suit the requirements:

CPU: STM32F429IGT6, 1MB Flash, 256K RAM
Flash: Serial 16MB W25Q128
SDRAM: 8MB IS42S16400J-7TLI
Size: 84.4mm x 47.5mm

If anybody would sell Devo 7E size shell...

victzh wrote: If anybody would sell Devo 7E size shell...

IIRC one of the WLtoys ones are similar in size...but with much much cheaper gimbals
I should really go into the loft to dig them out so I can go a bit further towards actually completing one of my dev boards...IIRC one had a neat looking navigation switch (up / down / left / right and enter in the middle)

Now there is at least one complete and fully working DIY Deviation TX out there it can only get easier

Regards
Rob