Hi guys I have designed and built a Contro Prop Unit (15" dia. props) intended for a 90" span RC Fairey Gannet. Basically it is controlled by 2 ESC,s for the two brushless motors and two servo,s for the pitch control of the props. The reason for for 2 ESC,s and 2 servo,s is that during flight the pilot of the Gannet would shut 1 engine down and cruise on the other then after 30 minutes or so would swap engines and cruise on the other and repeat this during the flight. this was for fuel economy and so that both engines would accumulate about the same running hours for maintenance reasons.
I am trying to reproduce this sequence on my unit controlled by my transmitter, from the throttle stick and a 3 position switch. Problem is my RC transmitter is only 8 channels and no sequencers at all only mixers which will be used up by other things like undercarriage, wing folding etc. So what I was hoping to do is use an Arduino UNO to take the signals from my receiver throttle and 3 position switch channels and pass them to the mini maestro 12 to start the appropriate sequence depending on the 3 position switch.
I have created suitable sequences on the maestro but at the moment they are just in one sequence with a short delay in between each just to seperate them. I have also built a mimic panel with 5 servo,s, 2 to mimic the pitch of each prop, 2 to mimic each ESC and 1 to mimic the Master throttle from the Tx and a 3 position switch to mimic the switch on the Tx. I did this because I think it would be a bit scary to try to sort this out using the Prop unit itself, and I think the sequencing will get a little more complicated than I have at the moment.
What I don’t know is how to connect up the 3 position switch on my mimic panel to simulate the switch on my Tx and a pot to simulate the throttle from my Tx. I can leave out the Arduino for the moment until I,ve done some more experiments with sequences and just use the maestro connected to my PC. and look at the interfacing later on (slowly slowly catchy monkey as they say) or a bit at a time.
Can you help out here at all as this part of it is all new to me so I,m struggling a bit.
Hope I,ve explained this well enough for you, sorry about the long post.
Rod