Unstable

Me and my friend are talking about a project with computer controled RC (basically making a computer radio that uses a real computer for its mixing) and I suggested instead of mucking about with RXs and frequencies and FCC regs that we use my 9cs trainer jack and use the 9c as the radio portion of the machine, this also lets us have a backup in case our computer crashes so that our model doenst crash

but I want to know the specs on the trainer jack before I go feeding any thing into my 9C (want to avoid letting the magic smoke out)

I looked on the futaba site but can find anything, anyone know of were I can find this info?

Thanks

Lynx

http://www.model-gadgets.com/

Your biggest obstacle will be finding a programmer to write the software you're gonna need. And one key note, PC's are insanely fast however they are not 'timely' in their delivery (300ms is considered a good latency on a connection) Considering 300ms is the length of 6 entire RC frames you start running into 'laggy' controls when you want a PC to mix something like that 'real-time' You either need to do it on a dedicated linux machine, or stripped Windows machine that runs only that one application, to avoid timing problems.

strato911

Or, you could have a REAL programmer write some machine code, and compile it into a DOS program. It'll provide a MUCH FASTER response time.

Image borrowed from http://users.belgacom.net/TX2TX/tx2t...h/tx2txgb3.htm

Unstable

the project goal is a embedded linux machine with somthing like 20 channels and a TON of mixing options.

if this works it wont be a beginners radio (seting up just basic functions will be hard) but it will have almost limitless possibilities.

but to start we need to get the basics down so I figured just working on an 8 channel setup running off a laptop (so we can change things on the fly) then we can start working on adding features.

and yes I have a real programmer working with me, I am just a hack when it comes to linux and programming (i need a book to get out a hello world in perl ) but he knows his stuff. while he knows next to nothing about RC and I.... well.. I am a BIT better at it then him.

strato911

I assume you already know this, but just in case you don't:

If you plan to expand the project to include more than 8 channels, you will not be able to use PPM as it is currently encoded, since there isn't enough time in the signal window for more than 8 channels. Using PCM, the limit is a bit higher, but I think it stops at 9-12 proportional channels. There are one or two radios supporting more channels, but they either aren't proportional, or they are using a non-standardized encoding & decoding scheme with a slower refresh rate.

Good luck, it sounds like an interesting project.:thumbup:

Lynx

Get to know a few micro controllers (Basic Stamp, BasicX, or any of the ATMEL based chips) They're lifesavers for that kind of stuff. The micro-controllers are perfect for generating things like RC signals. The PC does the processing work that the micro controller can't do very well, and then uses simple serial data to tell the micro controller what signal to send. That 'unplugs' hardware problems of direct control, everything uses serial ports.
If whatever you end up creating isn't easy to program just shoot your programmer.... There's no reason at all that it should be complex to program even for very advanced mixing. Especially if it runs on a PC where you have the glorious splurge space of a full screen to work with. You should be able to make everything simple. It really should all fit on a single screen.

Unstable

8 channels will be just till we figure out what we are doing and so we can use my 9c as the radio portion of the setup.

after we figure out how to get the controls sorted out then we work on the encoding of the data stream (we will be making our own setup digital possibly with compression runnging.) after we figure that out then adding channels should be trivial.

it may take a while to pull off (as long as I keep bugging my friend to help) as we have diffrent schedules so getting together is a pain... but if we do get it going it should be fun