... one giant leap for drone-kind. This is an RC receiver, and whilst they come as small as a finger-nail nowadays they still need a pair of antennae that any cockroach would be proud of.
The receiver operates like all RC currently (geddit?) on 2.4GHz, or UHF radio-waves. I last used these as a cadet in the RAF, because the military use UHF communications whereas airliners use VHF.
(I was shocked to discover that TV remotes operate at over 5 GHz ~ or SHF ~ tho' they use infrared light which to my mind is cheating.)
Note the dedicated battery ~ whose voltage I've forgotten but I do recall electronics runs generally on 5V DC ~ which has to be plugged in to the last port on the receiver, marked 8/SB because there are eight of them and SB because it's a serial bus that requires only a single wire. You remember those printer cables that looked like strips of lasagne? They were parallel buses, which have fallen out of favour.
Can I connect the plug the wrong way around? "Yes we can!" as Bob the Builder would say, and the only way of telling is that the green LED power-up light remains off.
Note there is a socket at the end of the R7008SB (catchy name, could be a BMW) for a voltage meter that transmits voltage back to the operator holding the transmitter. It doesn't say WHOSE voltage it is transmitting, as there may be separate batteries for the receiver and for the motors... you're just supposed to know, or risk ridicule at the annual RC-nerd convention over ginger beers.
Why though is knowing the voltage important? For you can run the motors and all else onboard from the same battery-pack, but then you need a distribution board, known to electrical engineers and pilots as a 'bus'. (And if you pronounce it 'bus' not 'buzz' you'll be paying for the ginger beers all night).
Well the Achilles Heel of the state of the art batteries that the modern world runs on is that if the voltage falls below a certain threshold i.e. flat, then you've to throw them away. Phones, cars and laptops use a BMC (Battery Management Computer tho' it used to mean British Motor Company in the age of empire) to prevent this from happening.
Tho' whilst you're driving the TELEDRONE, that BMC is going to be you.
© Colin Hilton, BMC.
