Home made R/C system

posted May 9th 2009 12:12pm by Caleb Kraft
filed under: misc hacks, wireless hacks

[dunk] sent his home made Radio Control system. It is constructed from a Playstation 2 controller, an Atmega 2561, microcontroller, some RF modules and various servos and motors. It seems to work pretty well. You can get all the schematics and source code on his site. Several people have submitted a similar project which involves an iPhone and a helicopter, but that one is a bit dubious, mainly due to it’s lack of detail.

Comments [21]

tagged: airplane, playstation 2, radio controlled

Reader Comments

Cool!

Posted at 1:06 pm on May 9th, 2009 by benjo

I’ve been wanting to start working with microcontrollers for wireless purposes for a while now, but I really dont know where to start.

I’d like to put together a cheap FM transmitter/reciever (or bluetooth if cheap enough) solution to add a remote lock system to my car.

I’m familiar with c++ and could learn c# easy enough, but I dont really know how to work with programmable microcontrollers.

If anyone wants to help, please email me at audrino [at] quantumrand.net

Thanks!

Posted at 1:34 pm on May 9th, 2009 by QuantumRand

Atmega 2561??? lol
its like building a Laptop inside RC plane to decode the signal

Posted at 2:09 pm on May 9th, 2009 by rasz

This is cool, seems like a pretty clean implementation.

quantumrand!

You should look into Cypress microcontrollers.
(That is also what he uses in the video)
They have lots of different chips, bluetooth radios on chips half the size of my little finger nail. But what they have is an IDE that will help you a lot, I was used to sitting around setting up my µC for hours and trolling the internet for drivers to LCD’s, motors etc. they have all these build in.

So get a development-kit, and buy a licence for their C compiler, its like $15 or so…you can also go Assembler thats free, but I dont like that, to low level.

Posted at 2:14 pm on May 9th, 2009 by Ricki

@ QuantumRand
General microcontroller embedded programming, interfacing with electronics? Try Arduino. Look it up. You can get cheap kits, sometimes pre-assembled, and there are many hardware clones. It’s probably one of the easiest ways to get started.

@ricki:
This project uses an AVR microcontroller, which is cheap and fairly easy. It uses a Cypress radio transceiver, not a Cypress microcontroller.

I’m currently looking to expand to direct AVR programming. I need a cheap ISP programmer. Apparently one can build a parallel port one with nothing more than 4 resistors (and the connectors), so I’ll be looking to do that :)

Posted at 3:16 pm on May 9th, 2009 by nebulous

Thanks for the input!

I just noticed that I typo’d my email address though! How embarrassing, lol.

It’s supposed to be arduino [at] quantumrand.net

Posted at 3:22 pm on May 9th, 2009 by QuantumRand

@ QuantumRand
Good rule of thumb: If you ask for info in a public forum, expect to get answered in that forum.

Anyway, get an Arduino (or similar, I have a Freeduino), get the Arduino IDE, and look at the examples given. Prototype shield + breadboard helps.

Posted at 4:06 pm on May 9th, 2009 by nebulous

@nebulous

I figured most of the replies would be here. I’m just trying not to steal too much thunder from the actual post :)

I’ll certainly look into the arduino some more.

Posted at 4:44 pm on May 9th, 2009 by QuantumRand

Be sure to check the other page dunk made, http://sites.google.com/site/mrdunk/interfacing-cypress-cyrf6936-to-avr-microcontrollers

I’m the other guy in the rcgroups thread who’s working on the arduino library, which is nearly finished. IMO, it’s a good alternative to xbee modules because of the price, although the xbee does have some nice extra features to it. The only annoying part is the 2×6 2mm pitch header on the modules, but I’m hoping to get a small arduino board designed for it eventually.

Posted at 8:35 pm on May 9th, 2009 by beano

@nebulous

It should be obvious he’s already using an arduino. That’s the email username he gave us after all.

Either that, or a REALLY odd coincidence.

Posted at 10:17 pm on May 9th, 2009 by draeath

I would love to see the plane fly !

Posted at 2:28 am on May 10th, 2009 by Sammy

you can see more progress and videos at society of robots.

Posted at 3:38 am on May 10th, 2009 by egf

wowee!

Posted at 3:42 am on May 10th, 2009 by egf

Yeah, a successful flight would be awesome.

It looks ready.

Posted at 6:27 am on May 10th, 2009 by strider_mt2k

Definitely get an arduino
– Cost-effective
– Lots of resources for assistance
– Based on/is java

Posted at 7:38 am on May 10th, 2009 by mars

Pick up a copy of Tom Igoe’s Making Things Talk it covers a lot of what you’re interested in.

Posted at 7:51 am on May 10th, 2009 by Jeff

to those people wanting to see it fly,
just go the website. there is a little footage there.
http://sites.google.com/site/mrdunk/Home

Posted at 3:30 pm on May 10th, 2009 by dunk

Thanks for the heads up on the vid!

Congrats!
-and the landing? -beautiful!

Posted at 3:23 am on May 11th, 2009 by strider_mt2k

hi nice blog, keep it up

Posted at 9:39 am on May 11th, 2009 by herbalsfromceylon

WELL if your want to learn more about the real Hacking Technique visit us at phimhongkong.com

Posted at 10:53 pm on May 26th, 2009 by Tam

damn, I just sold my PS2 last year. That is crazy. It looks to me all you have to do is get the coding down on the controller. Seems pretty simple programming. Unless I am wrong about this.

Posted at 9:19 pm on Oct 10th, 2009 by best flying rc airplanes

Home made R/C system

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