Transmitter & Receivers?

[Lejoni]

Hi

I’m fairly new to RC Flying in general.
I have some small minidrones, as well as a WLToys V383 that I’m currently practising on.
But they all have preprogrammed binded transmitters.
And I’m interested in building a Tricopter V4, as it seems very fun to fly.
But then I need to get a Transmitter and receiver for that.
So I’m looking for advice on what to get. I would like it to be able to be used for other stuff as well. Most of all I want to save up for a Curtis Youngblood Stingray 500 Kit, so it atleast need to be suitable for that.
It would also be a big + if it was easy to get a hold of here in Sweden, as well as not kill my economy more than necessary. 🙂

As a side note I’m also looking to get in touch with like minded people around where I live, in Västra Götaland (Borås) Sweden. 🙂

Thankful for any advice,
Best regards.
Joni

[biggestRCEfan]

Taranis and Frsky: can’t go wrong with that in terms of future growth, i.e. you can fly anything with it, multitude of receivers available and the user base is large, so it should stick around.

I started with a Hobby King Orange transmitter, but quickly wanted to get into having better control over what the transmitter can do.

Just my view. There are many options out there, depending on your need.

[hertz]

Go with a Taranis!
You can also get a multiprotocol module for it which may allow to control your existing toy-quads.

[Lejoni]

Thank you both for your feedback!

First I got a bit confused as I thought you meant Taranis and FrSky where different transmitters.
Then I figured out that FrSky is the brand(?) and Taranis the product line.
This brand has totally flown under my radar. Here in Sweden the most common one seems to be Futaba and Spektrum.

It seems to me that of the FrSky Taranis models Q 7X seems to be the most bang for the buck.
I also like that it uses open source and supports Linux (which is a must for me).

Now the downside with this one is that I can’t find any Swedish reseller.
Which means ordering it from far away, and thus effectively no guarantee :/
But then I ordered my WLToys V383 from Banggood for $200 and that turned out OK (not great but that just comes down to, you get what you pay for) so I guess I will order a Q7X from there as well.
This will have to wait a bit though, as I’m expecting a $400 dog insurance bill this month.

Can anyone recommend a good receiver for the Tricopter V4 that works well with the Q7X?
From what I have research the receiver that comes with a typical bundle is not very good for multirotors?

I just realised that I have not actually made sure that there is software for Linux to configure a multi rotor control module… But I’m sure there must be 🙂

[GAntonjo]

You have one reseller, Elefun, that have it in stock:
https://www.elefun.se/aspx/produsent.aspx?ProdusentID=404

That said, I have checked the Taranis Q7X at a friend, and I would not have bought it, as it “only” has 12 channels (as far as I could count stick, pots and switches), no rechargeable battery, and it cannot be upgraded to the marvelous X9 Hall Sensor stick that you can get to the Taranis X9D+. So, with respect to “bang for the bucks” I would go for the Taranis X9D+, preferably in Hall Sensor upraded version 😉

Fro Receivers you can go with the FrSky XM+ (small, full range) or FrSky X4R-SB (bigger, full range). They both should do the work nicely with the tricopter (I have the X4R-SB myself)

[Lejoni]

Thank you very much GAntonjo!

I did actually look at that site, but could not find it for some reason.
As far as I understand it QX7 is a 16ch radio. (think the 4 extra once are auxiliary that can be programmed.)
And I have heard multiple sources claim that the Hall sensor gimbal upgrade will also be coming to the QX7. I have no way of knowing if that is true though.
Here in Sweden the X9D+ is more than twice the price of the QX7 but then I need to get a SD card and battery for the QX7.

The only thing that worries me right now is CE vs. FCC types.
From what some say, if you have a CE radio you need to use CE receivers, and if you have a FCC radio you need FCC receivers. And I have not found a clear easy way to see what type the different products are when I look on sites.

[hertz]

CE vs FCC is determined by firmware flashed onto your internal TX module and RX, you can replace it.
Living in Russia with virtually no regulations, I used International (FCC) firmware at first, but then moved to a EU-LBT firmware.
I’d recommend going with a XSR, XSR-M or X4R-SB receivers if you’d like to have telemetry, or XM+ if you don’t need telemetry.

There were rumours of Hall Gimbals coming for QX7, and they probably will, but FrSky is a slow manufacturer.
They’re releasing R9D 900MHz system soon btw, which you’ll be able to plug into your Taranis (either X9D or QX7) and get a solid long-range link with SBUS and SmartPort telemetry.

[Lejoni]

Not sure how much telemetry I actually need. I would atleast like battery voltage.
Signal strength and altitude would also be nice.

I’ve heard that some receivers are supposed to be better for Multirotors because of there faster response time / lower latency? Maybe it will be more important later for the Collective Pitch Stingray 500?

I’ve never encountered anything that I simply could not learn. But I want to learn 3D flying on my V383 first before I decide to get the Stingray. So at first I’m just looking for a receiver that is suitable for the Tricopter V4.

And thank you very much for the information hertz, it’s good to know that CE/FCC is adjustable.
Is there a specific reason you moved from FCC to EU-LBT?
Is it as easy to change firmware on the receivers as the transmitter?

[hertz]

Each of XSR, XSR-M, X4R-SB, and XM+ has SBUS and the lowest delay possible for FrSky, no worries. Just pick whichever you like most from it’s price/appearance point of view, and whether you need telemetry or not.
If you want signal strength, then you’re XM/XM+ aren’t viable because they don’t have any telemetry, even RSSI.

With a Taranis, changing firmware on receivers is a piece of cake, just put an appropriate HEX file on your SD card, plug receiver into Taranis upgrade port and flash it from Taranis menu.

Latest EU-LBT promised equal or better range than International firmware and was overall a more up-to-date version, International firmware hadn’t been updated for a while.

[Lejoni]

https://www.banggood.com/IRangeX-IRX4-2_4G-CC2500-NRF24L01-A7105-CTRF6936-4-IN-1-Multiprotocol-STM32-TX-Module-With-Case-p-1139049.html?rmmds=search

This seams to be the module that allows for flying other models.
It does support WLToys but unfortunately not the V383 🙁
My Toy hexacopter is some kind of OEM that just says Hoverdrone Nano on it.
So prolly not worth getting this module directly at least.

[Lejoni]

Is the upgrade port the module port on the back, or is it the “S port” on the bottom?

Can’t find any good info on what the “S port” do and it does not seem to have any headers soldered on by default.

EDIT:
Ok so apparently the latest revision of the Q X7 has header pins soldered to the bottom S-Port.
And you can use that to upgrade firmware on receivers instead of the module port on the back.

[hertz]

Latest revision of QX7 have a SPORT marked port on the bottom, previous versions as well as the X9D(+) required you to use the JR module bay connector, but that’s basically the same procedure.

Are you sure it doesn’t support your particular toy quad? It’s best to consult RCGroups on this one or find the GitHub page for Multi-protocol TX module firmware, there are lots and and lots of supported models and most of them share the same protocol. Maybe your’s will work with some other model but with e.g. channels swapped, which is not a problem for a programmable radio with OpenTX.

[Lejoni]

The WLToys V383 is as far as I know there only collective pitch quadcopter.
It’s supposedly a straight clone of the Stingray 500.

Don’t know how similar that would be to traditional quadcopters.

In the list of supported models on the product page V383 was not listed.
It could be that that list only lists protocols that are preloaded on the module.

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