Author Andrei
16/05/2019

Once again, another topic that we have seen a lot on this website are RC controllers. Electronoobs made a few himself as well so we can't complain. While the prices of commercial RC transmitters are at an all-time low, and many of them can even run an open source firmware, there’s still nothing quite like building the thing yourself. How else are you going to get exactly what you want? In this case, Victor posted a new project on this open source radio controller, that by the way, looks awesome.

His design follows some of the trends we’ve already seen in terms of outward design and hardware expandability, but also branches off into some new territory with features such as dual integrated displays.

Why does your controller need two displays? The top 4.3 inch TFT is linked up to a 5.2 GHz video receiver, which makes it perfect for controlling vehicles in “first-person” view, such as drones. The lower screen is a 2.8 inch touch screen from Adafruit, which is intended to be used for navigating through menus and options once the firmware is fully fleshed out.

Powering the controller is a ESP32 and dual MCP23017 GPIO expanders to connect up to the array of input devices available to the user. The current iteration of the controller has ten switches, two encoders, some buttons, and a pair of scroll wheels for good measure. Oh, and of course there are a couple of joysticks in the mix as well.

All the devices terminate at a custom PCB in the back of the controller which looks to make modifying and adding input devices simple and neat. So guys, you have more details on his post ona forum on this link in case you want to read more and see more details, tests and how he made it. So thanks to Victor for this project with these charactersitics: Embeded video stream, multiple wireless protocols, more channels that I could possible, look like a bought transmitter.

Apart this post, if you have your own project and you need good quality PCBs, consider using the services of JLCPCB.com which will offer you quite good services, I use their services a lot of my PCBs.

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