

How to use an iPhone to Fly R/C Airplanes and Helicopters - jsatok
http://myauntishot.com/2009/full-scale-airplanes/rc-planes/how-to-use-an-iphone-to-fly-rc-airplanes-and-helicopters

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noonespecial
_Finally, you may ask how the servos are being driven. Well, routers are used
to send bits of information down a series of twisted pair wires usually. Guess
what it takes to send packeted information? An IC that would work really well
as a PWM! I did some haxoring around on this, and read what other nerds had
done on the internet, and the next think you know I have a servo with a Cat5E
plug on the end of it._

I'd love a _lot_ more detail about this "then a miracle occurred" stage of the
build. Drive a servo with an ethernet port?! Anyone know how to do this? That
sounds crazy cool.

~~~
aswanson
[http://www.industrialtechnology.co.uk/index.php?pageId=47...](http://www.industrialtechnology.co.uk/index.php?pageId=47&aid=1416)

~~~
noonespecial
Yeah, I found that too. That just seems to be factory servos (big ones) with
ethernet built in. The article suggests that there is somehow a way to
reprogram the PHYS ics in the linksys to output PWM to drive the servos that
were already in his rc copter.

I'd be really curious how this is possible since I use spakrfun serial servo
controllers now that are expensive and require full serial ports to run that
often aren't found on tiny openWRT-able routers.

~~~
aswanson
_Yeah, I found that too. That just seems to be factory servos (big ones) with
ethernet built in. The article suggests that there is somehow a way to
reprogram the PHYS ics in the linksys to output PWM to drive the servos that
were already in his rc copter._

Hmmm. Now that you mention it, I suppose it would not be difficult to format
custom ethernet frames with a duty cycle proportional to an analog output.

------
samlittlewood
Way Cool!

I did a hack a few years ago that made a PSX Dualshock pretend to be a buddy
box. A PIC polled the joypad, then fed a PPM stream into a Multiplex 3030
xmtr. Having a centre-sprung throttle was neat - but other than that - it was
not the best control experience ever.

From the eminent comfort of this armchair: If I was going to do this - I would
have left the router on the ground and used a couple of XBee modules, with a
micro (PIC, AVR) airborne to drive servos (4017 to spread 1 pwm pin to the
servos)

