Hey, hi. I got this idea from Bruce at rcmodelreviews.com and built the controller with arduino.
I was flying FPV with helical only, and I was getting some dropouts if I flew right above, or doing circles around me and ground station, preparing for landing. I could have just swapped helical for skew planar wheel, but I'd limit my range then. So why not use both at the same time? Pieces I used to put this together
- arduino pro mini (Duino - clone from ebay)- Turnigy UBEC
- relay
- power transistor
- two 5.8GHz receiver modules
- small 12v fan
- few passive parts (resistors, diode, capacitors, connectors)
- stripboard
Idea is simple: watch which receiver has higher RSSI (relative signal strength indicator), and switch that video signal out to display. In practice, I found out that modules are not perfectly identical, and put out different levels of RSSI. So arduino first does some calibration at the startup to get minimal and maximal RSSI when I turn on video Tx, and then does scaling to percentage prior to comparation. Nothing fancy, arduino is pretty much bored with about 10% memory used for this poject :).Some more pics for inspiration, enjoy!
3 prong connector in the middle is mini-XLR, carries power, ground and video signal through shielded cable to my LCD display. Rx modules and UBEC heat up a little, and black box in the sun wouldn't help them either, so I hotglued there small 12V fan from old computer, and drilled vents to the bottom part of box.
Guts!
mild spaghetti
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