I’m at least three meters away have the same kind with the antennae built in and I have it using the min
radio.setPALevel(RF24_PA_LOW); //Set power level, lower consumes less power but is more easily obstructed
If I set it to max I can walk at least half a block down before I think I start to lose signal (or my hearing just isn’t good enough).
Typically when I’m off the board I want it to stop too so it’s sort of an extra “safety” measure for it to eventually lose signal and not making more noise on the 2.4GHz band when you stay low power. New routers like Ubiquity and the like use 5GHz short range but good quality signals for most of the transmission and then use hard lines or 2.4GHz to a central hub because the 2.4GHz band is generally too congested everywhere.
Yeah definitely makes a difference when powering it from the arduino because the little spikes of extra juice it can pump through the antennae is more than what the Arduino can really keep supplying. Search for capacitors on this page, also the page in general helped me to get started with using this radio/chip:
I don’t doubt the “real” antennae will do better than the embedded solution either just saying I don’t know if it’s worth it for this application. Your design is super compact and would be easy to surface mount to other boards so it still has some advantages if you need something super micro but just hard to beat the price on the mass produced ones.
Also I still think adding a low power MCU with the nrf chip and breakouts like I have on mine would be great then it’s all just one board for what we need here but not as multipurpose and probably price will still be a bit higher (maybe not when you count assembly and programming though).
For doing a built in analog to digital converter and doing the interfacing to the nrf chip from the potentiometer and ESC. You have basically a voltage divider with any sort of potentiometer and need to read that analog 0-VCC as a digital value (on ATMEGA328P chips it’s a 10-bit ADC so you get 0-1024) from the potentiometer then send that using the nrf chip to the other board that receives it and needs to write a PWM signal to the ESC to tell it what throttle to go. The board I made just has the three pin breakouts for connecting to the potentiometer and the ESC. Since you’re already looking at getting assembly done if you baked the ATMEGA328P or something similar that can both read the potentiometer and write to the ESC and talk to the nrf chips then you have everything baked onto one PCB (could even get surface mount potentiometer maybe I dunno).
Also even with these cheapo NRF boards my controller has been reliable the biggest problems I ran into were due to bad soldering on my part and a bit of weirdness that can happen when the MOSI pin gets disconnected and everything else is still connected (reading available() reports all good and reading data reports 255 on the receiver, but fixed it by only accepting values in the range of 1-254, still gives 125 steps of throttle up and throttle down and the data is a simple 8 bit stream nothing to parse).
I’m also using the voltage regulator on the Arduino for the power coming from the ESC or in the controller from the battery and need the tx/rx breakouts for programming.
Also consumers are price conscious (to some degree though Apple continually proves this wrong), so even if your remote turns out better it will cost considerably more for you to make it than some already decent competition that’s out there (stuff mentioned above that is not great but not completely awful and cheap). If you just make it for you that’s all good but if you plan to sell to others you’ll be doing it at a huge loss I think unless you think of price (assembly, shipping, customer service, etc.).
Not to be ageist but look at the recent posts about alextech and realize this is the first attempt at developing a product and bringing it to market, keep you expectations set appropriately. Don’t get me wrong Sanders design so far is super impressive, but it took me 6months before I encountered the MOSI issue mentioned above, if I had gone straight to market without using mine for a year that problem would have never been caught, also were dealing with stuff here that requires fcc approval if it’s sold assembled and programmed so there are legal things to deal with beyond the engineering (personally decided to give up pursuing building this because of all the legal issues, sold as a kit that needs assembly and programming can get around some of that but lots of potential to get sued or otherwise legally screwed here it seems)
Just set up an llc. Worst that can happen is you loss your llc’s assets. Won’t affect your personal stuff.
Honestly, we need people with knowledge and balls to bring to market better remotes. Not for reliability, but minimal data like speed and distance on the controller would be nice, along with modes (via vesc settings)
I looked at your stuff the other day and was pretty impressed.
I have an s-corp already for web development business, an llc is fine for protecting you personally from getting sued assuming you do all your paperwork correct and everything is legit, but that takes some time and effort as well otherwise things don’t hold up in court if you make an error and xyz’s lawyer’s are better than yours.
Initially I thought the existing ones on the market were better than they are but have seen a lot of recent posts since I’ve been participating in the forum more recently about people having weird and seemingly dumb issues with remotes due mostly to dumb defaults (no failsafe by default and such things). So I see there is definitely lots of room for improvement not to mention all the bells and whistles @Sander has been working on.
Personally opted to go with just what’s necessary, this way no other BS to do, just get a throttle signal send it, receive it and use it, no other BS to do. I had ordered one of those OLEDs but took a couple months to get here and don’t really know what I would display on it that I can’t get from looking at the board since it has a voltmeter on there and that’s pretty much what I need to know… I ordered a metr module that should get here tomorrow and the interface and data gathering there already seems great.
Keep in mind again I do want to see this thing made eventually and I do think you can do better than everything currently available, just need to set expectations appropriately and not rush into something only to regret it, think if you take time with developing/testing/working out any potential legal issues then you have an awesome product.
All we actually need is a KIT with 3d printed enclosure…thus I don’t understand why everyone tries to develop their own remote instead of taking super reliable GT2b or Mini Remote and just add additional functionality. This solution would legally cover you 100%.
Well that’s sort of what I made but didn’t think to try and get it to fit in an existing remote figured just make it as small as possible then design a shell to wrap around it… what you say makes good sense though.
Also I’ve seen some mixed things on these remotes I think where the potentiometer is crappy I forget which particular remote it was honestly, but sort of silly if the shell isn’t ideal and made with good components in the first place. I can pocket mine which I see as a big advantage, never tried one of the thumb wheel remotes so no point of reference to compare there but I like the trigger style remote.
Also mine is basically a first iteration on the shell some other people are working on shells using the same guts.
I really doubt you’ve heard bad things about GT2b or Mini Remote… These two are simply amazing. I’ve got Mini Remote …no problems pairing the remote …batteries last forever…I’have never lost signal not even once and i ride in the city all the time…and trigger works super precisely. The only drawback is that it would be nice to have good looking 3d mod.
Thought it was the gt2b where people said it was hit or miss on the potentiometer under the trigger failing but would have to do some searching around here to confirm. Have also heard a lot of positive things about both just saying I’m not sure if any of them is ideal, would need to buy them all to compare really but pretty much leaving it to others to design the shell, I might redo my own as well but already seen some promising options out there.
Add Nano v2 to the list. Benchwheel + Nano v2 are the only remotes for so far. I’m a fan of thumb control since I have more control with it. There’s a reason game console controllers have the thumbs for the analog stick
