A* Pinout & Hookup to Maestro & RC Transceiver

Reading the A-Star manual did not give me enough information about how to hookup the A-Star. I’m sort of new to this, but understand the concepts, I just don’t understand all the acronyms. I am using three Maestro 24-Ch servo controllers all controlled by the A-Star programmable controller on my RC Boat. I’m transmitting control commands to the boat, and receiving status information from the boat for realtime display on the shore based control panel. The A-Star also needs to interface with some sort of RC Transceiver (still researching which one will do the job).

The attached block diagram shows how I think I need to hook up the devices. I don’t know what pins to use on the A-Star for the Transceiver (Rx/Tx). I think that the TXD1 and RXD1 need to interface with the Maestros.

The Transceiver I need will need a range of 1 to 1.5 mile (approx. 1.5 to 2.5 Km).

Thanks, Derek

Hello, Derek.

Your connections between the Maestros and the A-Star look fine. The part with your receiver and transceiver does not really make sense though. Only the receiver would be connected to the A-Star, with the RX line of your receiver connected and TX line of the A-star and the TX line of your receiver connected to the RX line of the A-Star.

By the way, we have a Pololu Maestro Servo Controller library for Arduino that makes it easier to control a Maestro. You can read more about using the library (like which pins to connect to), on the Github page for the library.

- Grant