Adding Features To A DX6i Transmitter

About thirty cents and some wire are all it takes to start hacking extra features into this DX6i transmitter. The DX6i is a six-channel, two-mode transmitter used to control hobby airplanes and helicopters. There are several built-in features but [Ligius] found an easy way to add a few more. In the upper left portion of the case you can see the eight-pin microcontroller he brought to the project.

It’s a PIC 10F222 mounted in a DIP socket so that it may be removed for reprogramming. The hardware page of the wiki shows the connections he made. By reading from the throttle, and tapping into the trainer wire, he is able to add features without any apparent alterations to the controller (no extra buttons, etc). You can see in the clip after the break that the throttle position when power is switched on selects between different modes. This can be the delay for turning off the LCD backlight, or presets for helicopter or airplane modes. [Ligius] thinks there’s a lot more potential here, even the possibility of fixing a bug in this particular model of transmitter.

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Miniscule Intervalometer

Calling this intervalomemter small would be a glaring understatement. It’s tiny enough to fit inside the plastic cover for a 2.5mm jack for use with a Canon DSLR camera. We should point out that the image we put together is a bit misleading. The picture of the jack is version 1 of this circuit and uses an 8-pin SOIC chip. The board in the oval is version 2, with a PIC 10f222 SOT23-6 package making it even smaller than the original version.

This is used for time-lapse photography. When plugged in the chip draws power from the camera. Get this: it learns the timing interval by listening for the first two images. Once you’ve snapped the first two pictures the PIC will continue to take images based on that initial delay. Amazing.

[Thanks AW via DIY Photography]