Using a iPad mini to control a feather

**PJ-27** · 4th December 2012, 08:15

The Hobby King ones:
http://www.hobbyking.com/hobbyking/stor ... de_2_.html

It even says in the description not suitable for root use (not sure why though....) I've bought a set to test them out but given how many issues we had with the cheapy RadioLink sets I don't expect much but should be good for AWs. I think the Australians use them a lot.

**Gabe01** · 4th December 2012, 10:14

Thank you Guys for your input and enthusiasm, I am lucky enough to work for a company that produces bespoke apps for a safety critical environment. For me building robots as always been about innovation. To give some background to our work, we have envisaged this idea to give our new graduate something exciting to learn computer code around. The project is being overseen by our senior programmer. The reason I have created this thread is to get you involved and incorporate your ideas. I would like to hear your concerns Gary so we can factor them into our project. Once and if our project is successful we would release the app to the App Store and make the code open source, to encourage innovation and interest in computer code.

**grant_ploughbot** · 4th December 2012, 11:31

Gabe, if you think you might have issue's with the bluetooth being reliable enough then I would recommend trying to use your app to control a spektrum TX. That way you will always have a good link to the robot.

That's what we do with all of our projects. For example last night on Stephen Fry's Gadget Man, we made the software to control it over the the internet using an Xbox controller. On the receiving end we had another PC/laptop that took those commands and sent them to the DX18 using PPM into the Trainer port.

This worked really well and reliably, even over the internet. I'm not sure what the easiest way for you to create a PPM signal would be but we have used a couple of wayss which may be of some use to you.
If your sending data from the Ipad over bluetooth to an arduino/PIC or something similar then it shouldn't be too difficult to create a PPM signal with those. I can probably send you the PPM values you would need for Spektrum Radios.
The other way we did it was to generate a PPM signal through the Audio jack on the PC! Funnily enough, you can create a usable PPM signal through the Audio sound card, I have no idea how it would be done on a IOS device as we have only worked on Windows and android based software. This worked well for us, it had a small amount of jitter but nothing concerning.
The 3rd way we have done it is using a USB2PPM converter. This might be an easier way for you to just send out basic data to a USB port on an arduino/pic and let the converter do the rest.