Electronics and RC Aero

It has been quiet on the Forum lately. Many of you must be beavering away on new projects and repairs. Being stuck at home, the weather not helping either I have been playing with logic processors. My Twin Otter needed some more powerful and realistic lighting and this is what I have been working on. With three spare RX channels I could make use of these.

When the aircraft is static a TX switch will set it's beacon flashing and turn on it's wing lights. When starting to taxi another
TX switch will turn on the anti-collision. A third switch will turn on wing and nose landing lights. I think this is the nearest I can get to rules regarding full size aircraft movements. I have been thinking too on the lines of a motion sensor that will automatically turn on the anti-collision which will save one channel and a switch movement by the pilot.
Demo test video below.

Yes, I know! "What an anorak" :lol: Bu it keeps me from getting bored.

Wish i had time to get bored, my uninvited non R/C projects keep tripping me up !

Non RC projects? I was going to replace the fascias/guttering then felt on the garage then thought better still I will get someone else to do it - professionally. The bathroom rebuild has been stalled again for now. I go through phases with electronics but after while I begin to solder my fingers and with such small SMDs my eyes are out of stalks. Magnifier glass only extends the time of before losing it. Then, damn just bricked another microprocessor!

kevinross wrote: Wish i had time to get bored, my uninvited non R/C projects keep tripping me up !

Tell me about it, I've spent a happy Sunday morning fixing an "Err 15" on my dishwasher. I've looked at the handbook and it says " In case of dishwasher exhibiting error message: Err 15, buy her diamonds". Oh well!

If that is all the handbook suggests it might be cheaper to move out, get yourself a self-contained tent and then the money you saved you could buy a decent plane.

Lots of the RC stuff we buy regardless of brand seems to have all or very similar circuitry. the processor in most of our ESC's use the same chip as in my Arduinos the ATmega328. When you take apart some of these RC branded units you find the same processors/circuitry in many of them.

The only difference in my opinion is the cheap ones will have skimped on a few ancillary components. But with so many electronic modules on the market and mainly SMD, I wonder why I bother making up my PCBs when I can buy the ready made PCB and SMDs in place, just adapting the module to suit the job in hand.

Anyway, you can see why I made that last statement. In one picture my original lighting controller for my Twin Otter and the faffing about to get connections from one side of the board to another. In the other picture a double sided PCB with integral voltage regulator and headers for the Arduino Nano.

Strangely enough I came across during my "net surfing/shopping" a PCB module with servo outputs, two Rx inputs, SBus , HV power regulator, etc. Looked very similar layout to a Powerbox but a quarter of the price. Who needs a pretty case anyway.