bikerbones1968 wrote:I basically built a copper buss bar for the connections. Here is a basic diagram how it connects. * Note I used one of the ESC BEC circuits to power the RX. All other ESC in the circuit have the center conductor (red in my case) removed from the socket and insulated with a small piece of heat shrink.
aha, ok cool, I think that makes sense! Back to the workbench!
So far I'm having little to no luck with the cat5 antenna. I suspect it may be to do with either on board interference from the ESC's, or may alternatively need a good length of bare copper wire soldering onto the wire I'm using for the antenna. It works very intermittently, leading me to suspect that it only picks up the signal via the air while it's at a shallow depth. I'll also try removing the antenna from the futaba receiver and joining the ethernet wire directly to the receiver, rather than soldering the ethernet wire to the antenna
I have the antenna from the receiver on board connected to a spare wire in the cat 5 travelling to the surface where it emerges from the cable with a small length stripped bare. No matter how close I move the transmitter to the end of the wire I get no response. I'mm only getting a response when it's close to the surface.
I think some of the trouble you are having is at the receiver end, most if not all of the 2.4 GHz trans use one forum of spread spectrum. So the receiver is looking for a frequency or RF that is jumping around the 2.4 GHz band. Some will see the ppm pulse and others will not. If yours dose that is a very good thing and it will work over long theaters be cause the front end of the receiver will amplify the signal. Also the ppm caries all channels of the transmitter if 9 Chanel 9 will be in then ppm pulse.
I have some 9x transmitters and I will measure the peak to peak power of the ppm out that will give us some Idea of how long a theater can be used with out the front end of a receiver. The good news for those of us that have receiver won't work. There is still two approaches to use hack the receiver and inject the ppm after the front end that wants to see RF. Out put of the receiver then would normal some receivers like the FrySky have ppm sum out put and then you would have all the channels again. The other way to go would be to use an arduino board this will take the PPM and you would have PWM and analog out puts and in puts (servos sensors ESCs etc.) The muitiwii copter uses this very same soft were, we wound just need to adapt it to our needs. It can be very simple just direct drive, all the way to automatic functions like heading hold and depth hold and so forth.
I am not real good with programing but I can muter through. The electronic end I am better at being and old Ham N0ORK
The ROV thing is all new to me and there is much to learn here I hope I can give some back also.
MAC
I did see this different approach using a 2.4 GHz radio system. They kept the receiver topside and transmitted RF normally from the transmitter. The PPM data stream was connected via cat five to the ESC. It worked on 100 feet this way perfectly. The only down side would be more conductors in the tether for control but as far as signal loss there wont be any.
bikerbones1968 wrote:I did see this different approach using a 2.4 GHz radio system. They kept the receiver topside and transmitted RF normally from the transmitter. The PPM data stream was connected via cat five to the ESC. It worked on 100 feet this way perfectly. The only down side would be more conductors in the tether for control but as far as signal loss there wont be any.
