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Robot Dude
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PostPosted: Sat Oct 04, 2008 2:23 pm 
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I'm pretty sure they all use the same transmitter. The one in this DX6 has DX7 silk screened on it.

This brings up two points.

1. You should be able to inject the 7th channel for free. 8)

2. The DX5e should be just as good.

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TCIII
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PostPosted: Sat Oct 04, 2008 6:44 pm 
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Jim,

I think you will find that the DX6 runs on 9.6 vdc and the DX6i runs on 4.8 vdc so they may not be quite the same.

Regards,
TCIII

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Robot Dude
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PostPosted: Mon Oct 06, 2008 9:23 am 
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I searched the great google and was unable to find any images of the DX6i opened up. :( We will have to wait till I get them in to see inside. :P

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zenta
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PostPosted: Mon Oct 06, 2008 9:53 am 
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Robot Dude wrote:
Well 4 hours later... I can read in and send out the pulses in the proper format for the radio to transmitter data exchange. Now we just need to write the keyboard scanning code.


Great work Jim! Let's hope it works for the DX6i too. Did you test that the receiver got the correct pwm values too?

.. hmm maybe I should have bought a Spectrum DX6i at the first, instead of the expensive Futaba :roll:

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Xan
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PostPosted: Mon Oct 06, 2008 9:57 am 
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Hi Jim,

Robot Dude wrote:
I searched the great google and was unable to find any images of the DX6i opened up. :( We will have to wait till I get them in to see inside. :P


I don't know exactly what you are looking for but there is a pic on page 12 of the manual
And there are some other modifications on the web that are showing some pictures of the insides.

Xan
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Robot Dude
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PostPosted: Mon Oct 06, 2008 1:13 pm 
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zenta wrote:
Robot Dude wrote:
Well 4 hours later... I can read in and send out the pulses in the proper format for the radio to transmitter data exchange. Now we just need to write the keyboard scanning code.


Great work Jim! Let's hope it works for the DX6i too. Did you test that the receiver got the correct pwm values too?

.. hmm maybe I should have bought a Spectrum DX6i at the first, instead of the expensive Futaba :roll:


Yes the servos on the receiver were working as they should. ;)

If my suspicions are correct it might work with any of the 2.4ghz radio systems. We will see soon.

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Robot Dude
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PostPosted: Mon Oct 06, 2008 1:14 pm 
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Xan wrote:
Hi Jim,

I don't know exactly what you are looking for but there is a pic on page 12 of the manual
And there are some other modifications on the web that are showing some pictures of the insides.
Xan


The last one had the best images, but I wasn't able to determine how the transmitter (much smaller unit than the DX6) is wired.

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Robot Dude
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PostPosted: Mon Oct 06, 2008 1:29 pm 
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Ok, so assuming we will be able to get this to work on the DX6i...

This could easily be made into a 32 button keyboard using two servo channels. The microcontroller monitoring the two channels would be programmed to; turn on or off I/O pins, move servos, start SSC-32 stored sequences, change the gait or speed, or other program parameter, etc. Other programming would allow some buttons to act as shift keys, but the one way communication makes it a little more challenging. This is because the pulses are sent as long as you are pressing the buttons. This may be difficult for the robot side program to know if the button was pressed more than once or pressed for a long time.

Here is a proposal for the pulsout separation values. (0.050uS) The addition of a NOP or Null value allows 16 unique values and a nice 1.1mS to 1.9mS range. It may be possible to use 25uS separation for many more keys...

Code:
NOP  1100uS
  0  1150uS
  1  1200uS
  2  1250uS
  3  1300uS
  4  1350uS
  5  1400uS
  6  1450uS
  7  1500uS
  8  1550uS
  9  1600uS
 10  1650uS
 11  1700uS
 12  1750uS
 13  1800uS
 14  1850uS
 15  1900uS

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Robot Dude
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PostPosted: Mon Oct 06, 2008 1:45 pm 
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Everything's better with images.

DX6

Image

DX6i

Image

Hrm, we may need to cut a trace! :(

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Robot Dude
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PostPosted: Tue Oct 07, 2008 11:37 am 
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I have ordered several of the radios. When they get here later this week I will know exactly what's possible. My next step is to do some simple inline code for watching the A,B,C buttons and pass some values to the transmitter. Then I will connect an atom to the receiver to capture the pulses and turn on some LED's. If that goes well I will try to get Kurte to make an interrupt driven 4 x 4 or 4 x 8 keyboard scanning program. Kurte, are you interested?

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Robot Dude
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PostPosted: Tue Oct 07, 2008 5:01 pm 
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I have successfully sent varying pulses depending on which of the 3 buttons on the Bot Board II are pressed. 8)

Code:
cha1 var word
cha2 var word
cha3 var word
cha4 var word
cha5 var word
cha6 var word
intest var bit
xx var byte
a_key var bit
b_key var bit
c_key var bit

sound 9, [100\880, 100\988, 100\1046, 100\1175]

low 3
input 12
input 13
input 14

start:      ; find the beginning.
intest = in0
if intest = 1 then start
for xx=1 to 10
intest = in0
if intest = 1 then start
pauseus 500
next

start2:
intest = in0
if intest = 0 then start2
pauseus 500
pulsin 0,1,cha1
pauseus 500
pulsin 0,1,cha2
pauseus 500
pulsin 0,1,cha3
pauseus 500
pulsin 0,1,cha4
pauseus 500
pulsin 0,1,cha5
pauseus 500
pulsin 0,1,cha6
pauseus 500

;serout S_OUT,i57600,[dec5 cha1\5," "]

a_key = in12
b_key = in13
c_key = in14

cha5 = 1400
if a_key = 1 then next1
cha5 = 1500
next1:
if b_key = 1 then next2
cha5 = 1600
next2:
if c_key = 1 then next3
cha5 = 1700
next3:

cha1=cha1*2
cha2=cha2*2
cha3=cha3*2
cha4=cha4*2
;cha5=cha5*2
cha6=cha6*2

;serout S_OUT,i57600,[dec5 cha5\5," "]

makepulses:
high 3
pauseus 740
pulsout 3,cha1
pauseus 740
pulsout 3,cha2
pauseus 740
pulsout 3,cha3
pauseus 740
pulsout 3,cha4
pauseus 740
pulsout 3,cha5
pauseus 740
pulsout 3,cha6
pauseus 740
low 3
goto start2

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Robot Dude
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PostPosted: Wed Oct 08, 2008 11:05 am 
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I was seeing some unexpected results from my program, so I went through some reality checks. Pulsin has a 1uS resolution and pulsout has a 0.5uS resolution. However there is still a difference in measured pulses going from the main board to the transmitter compared to the pulses coming from the receivers output. :shock: In fact if I read the pulses coming from the main board and sent them to the transmitter all was fine. However when I tried to inject pulses with the real outputs 1000uS to 2000us. The transmitter would not even work.

First off the radio itself generates the following pulse values measured at the receivers outputs. (where you plug servos in). My testing was done with default values for throw.

Code:
       | default | exp. (150%)
-------|---------|------------
min    | 1130uS  |   940uS
center | 1500uS  |  1500uS
max    | 1884uS  |  2060uS


I read the pulses coming from the main board using the IDE. I also verified it with my scope just to be sure. I got the following.

Code:
       | main board | receiver out
-------|------------|-------------
min    |  722uS     |  1130uS
center | 1095uS     |  1500uS
max    | 1486uS     |  1884uS


So what's going on here?

Looks like in order to save some time they subtracted 400uS from the desired pulse length from the main board and the transmitter module added it back in. It may be the receiver module itself where the 400us is added back in.

So for a 1100uS pulse you would need to send (1100 - 400) x 2 = 1400. For 1150uS it's (1150 - 400) x 2 = 1500.

So it worked before, but now I know why. Wow my head hurt on that one. :twisted:

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Robot Dude
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PostPosted: Wed Oct 08, 2008 1:12 pm 
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Huge sigh. Got the DX5e and DX6i in and the good news is they apparently use the same scheme as the transmitter module goes direct to the main board on both of them. The bad news is they are no longer doing pulse length signals to the transmitter module like the older DX6! :( It's now 100% digital communication. You can see the binary counting in the signal as you move the stick. Here is an image.

Image

At this point it might be easier to make a board to replace the main board completely.

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SN96
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PostPosted: Wed Oct 08, 2008 2:12 pm 
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A custom board with that unique shape is going to be a challenge.

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Robot Dude
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PostPosted: Wed Oct 08, 2008 2:20 pm 
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We don't need that large silly shaped board. A small 1" x 1" board would fit all we would need. 4 x analog inputs and a 4 x 8 keyboard matrix.

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