John Leeman (Servo Elev-8 Drone Delivery articles) a member?

DrPop

Just finished reading Drone Delivery featuring the Parallax Elev-8 in Servo Magazine [Dec '17 & Jan '18 issues] by John Leeman. I was wondering if anyone here knows him or if he's on the forums? Great article on experimenting with a gripper, remote drop and GPS. One of the pictures shows he's using a Turnigy 9X, an Open TX compatible radio, which I'm seriously looking into.

If anyone else has done it, does it require anything extra to use a radio other than Spektrum with the Elev-8? It should be fully compatible since the Elev-8 flight controller supports PWM, S-BUS, PPM as well as the Spektrum stuff.
It would be nice to confirm before I purchase yet more hardware though!
Thanks!

Publison

It is member @geo_leeman . He has started 11 threads.

Just about any RX/TX combination should work. You just have to be familiar with configuring the radio correctly. Parallax has supplied the Spektrum transmitter configuration files, so it's very easy to set up.

DrPop

Thanks! Not sure how to look up someone's real name like that on here. I agree it looks like everything should work smoothly, I might drop him a line about that transmitter just in case he has any tips for the setup.

JasonDorie

The Elev-8 has native support for PWM, PPM, S-BUS, and SRXL receivers, so yes, it is compatible with nearly anything.

The Spektrum radio was likely chosen because they're inexpensive, and can be configured with a file, making it easy to support. For the Elev-8, if you create a standard "airplane" profile in your radio with all trims zero'd, and all ranges at maximum when you do your controller calibration, the firmware adapts to whatever that happens to be on your radio.

I wrote the firmware, and I check in here semi-regularly - feel free to ask questions.

geo_leeman

Hi @DrPop - I am indeed a member, I was just out of commission with work travel for quite a while. I'm around though! (and finally catching up on some forum reading) The Turnigy was no problem to get working.

DrPop

geo_leeman wrote: »

Hi @DrPop ... The Turnigy was no problem to get working.

Hi, thanks for the nice reply when you got back on here! After reading about several of the radio setups, I ended up going with a Radiolink AT10 II. I have it running SBUS with just the single wire to the receiver and everything seems to be working pretty nice.
Enjoyed your articles in Servo, and I'll try to do that project someday with a servo and getting it to pick up / drop things off at a target location. That would enter the realm of "useful" drones.