General question about R/C transmitter interfaces - General question: R/C interface

[barthirst]

Hello all,

I have a general question about R/C transmitter interfaces:

what is the difference between a serial 'PIC' interface, and a vanilla serial interface.

thanks, and sorry if this question is a repeat, I searched the forums, but couldn't find an answer.

thanks!
Bart

[Steve Lewin]

One uses a PIC microcontroller, produces a real serial datastream as output and works with Windows 2000 and XP. The other doesn't (any of those).

Steve

[barthirst]

Ah! so I will have to make a PIC interface :0 Guess I better start reading those discussions...

Off hand, do I have to buy a kit? Or can these be made from 'radio shack' parts?

My radio is a relatively new JR 5-channel with the mono plug type buddy-box adapter.

thx!
Bart

[Steve Lewin]

If you know how to load a program into a PIC and have access to a programmer all the bits are easy to get. Otherwise buying one is probably easier, try or any of the many other places that sell them.

Steve

[Eric Brouwer]

If you are interested in building an interface yourself, have a look at my web page. There is a PIC 16C84 interface, and I also have a simple PIC programmer including software on my web page. Go to or just click on the "Homepage" button below.

Regards

[barthirst]

First of all I want to thank all the people that post on this board. This is a great site. :p

Ok, I’m going to post this in the 'Parallel port-PPM-Interface' forum too, but I'll document it here to:

I have an XF421 JR 5-channel transmitter. I built the circuit here:


It did not work at all on my windows 2000 (win2k) machine. This is not surprising as windows 2000 and windows XP (winXP) do not work with the Parallel port-PPM-Interfaces (I found this out the hard way! ... then read it here)

However I was determined to make use of my circuit!

I have an extra machine lying around, so I made myself a DR DOS boot disk and put FMS151e (dos of course) on the floppy and booted up. After setting the Parallel port in the BIOS to ECP and making note of the Base I/O Address & IRQ Interrupts, I was on my way to alpha testing the circuit.

The first half-dozen try’s were unsuccessful, so I pulled the circuit from the back of the computer, and did a service inspection on my handiwork (the circuit was built on a little Solder less Breadboard... of course I wouldn't solder from the get-go!) Turns out I had the transistor mounted backwards, and a slight node error where the signal line goes to the buddy-box connector. I fixed these problems, and then re-rigged the circuit to the back of the computer again, booted up in ECP, and Voila! IT WORKED!! woo hoo. (Well this is the reaction you get after you first 10 attempts fail)

In summary:

The Parallel port-PPM-Interface described here:


Works with the JR XF421 transmitter with DOS operating system (it probably would work perfectly on win9x, ME etc. too)

My next project is to build a PIC Serial Interface. I will probably be buying a pre-programmed PIC as I do not have a programmer.

Thanks again,
Bart