Category: Electronics

  • FS1000A and XY-MK-5V range test

    Very often, where you go cheap, there is a price to pay. Exactly like with cheap 433MHz transmitter-receiver pair of FS1000A and XY-MK-5V. You rather do not expect much for $1, right? When playing with them in a middle of a big city (Berlin), few meters of the range was all those modules were able…

  • FS1000A and XY-MK-5V 433MHz RF modules: overview

    One of the cheapest (but not the best) solutions for DIY wireless data transmission between different devices (Arduino and other microcontrollers) is a pair of 433MHz modules: FS1000A and XY-MK-5V. A set of them (you will need one transmitter and one receiver) costs about $1. Pretty cheap, right? Of course, there is a price to…

  • Using FET transistors as switches

    When over a year ago I published this post about using transistors as switches, I described only how to do it with bipolar transistors. And bipolar (NPN and PNP) transistors have a small problem: they are current driven, so they consume current when they are switched on. They consume much less than they drive, but…

  • STM32 F1 and F3 versus LRS 433MHz interference issue

    This topic first appeared on my table few weeks ago. Can a flight controller interfere with long range system running on 433MHz band like openLRSng? STM32 F1 and F3 based CPU running most flight controllers (Naze32, SPracingF3, Flip32, CC3D, etc.) run on 72MHz. Actually this is 8MHz of external clock and 9 multiplier. But still,…

  • ESP8266 ESP-01 Low Power Mode – run it for months

    Amazing ESP8266 ESP-01 WiFi boards have pretty irritating problem: theirs power consumption is pretty high. Minimal power consumption of about 70mA when doing nothing and above 100mA when when transferring data makes it rather impossible to use it on battery power for a longer period of time. Set of 2 AA batteries would be drained…

  • Simplest hardware inverter for flight controller

    Simplest hardware inverter for flight controller

    Together with increasing popularity of STM32F4 flight controllers, telemetry became hard topic again. Why? Most popular telemetry protocols, SmartPort and FrSky telemetry , requires inverted signal. Zero becomes one, one becomes zero. In case on STM32F3 that was not a big problem. Those CPUs have built in inverters. STM32F1 and STM32F4 does not. So, if…

  • MPU6000 vs MPU6050 vs MPU6500

    MPU6000 and MPU6050 Deep down, MPU6000 and MPU6050 are the same same hardware. They both have the same 3 axis gyroscope and the same 3 axis accelerometer. Both allows max 8kHz gyro sampling rate. From a flight controllers point of view, the only difference between them is bus that connects them to CPU. MPU6000 allows…

  • ATtiny85 Light Sensor – I2C slave device

    ATtiny85 Light Sensor – I2C slave device

    I love AVR ATtinyx5 series microcontrollers. They are cheap, easy to use, they can be programmed just like Arduinos and comparing to their size they offer great features. For example, they can be used as a remote analog to digital converters connected to a master device using an I2C bus. Background: A few years ago…

  • Micro MinimOSD stops overlaying in flight: solution

    Both MinimOSD and Micro MinimOSD suffers from irritating technical problem. In some setups, they stops overlaying data during hard maneuvers or even right after arming. Problem is very simple: chip MAX7456 is extremely sensitive in terms of supply voltage quality. Working motors and/or servos, can introduce enough power supply noise to occasionally force MAX7456 to…