Originally Posted by flyingfever

That would be very useful, as with many of my electrified scale sailplanes, I'd sure like to switch from throttle to flap,crow or spoiler on the throttle stick for landings. It'd beat presently having to use a switch or side slider for one. Here's hoping. Thanks.

if you do, you will have to change one of the following conventional uses, ie. full motor = stick forward, full flaps = stick back. I tried this with my MC24, it works fine except that in a panic situation I got muddled-up several time in critical positions.

E_Ferret,
To make sure I don't get confused about the operation of the stick, I think of it as my CROW control which is bringing the ailerons UP as the stick goes up. The way I have it programmed in, my flaps drop to full extension when I go into the mode (along with kicking in elevator adjustment) and then I control the descent by adjusting my crow with the stick.

make sense? Throttle down is Off, Crow down is Off. Throttle up is full, Crow up is full. I make the transition when the stick is at the bottom and it works really well.

The possibilities are endless.
You could put springs on the throttle stick and make it self centering.

Push the throttle stick forward for motor control.
Pull the throttle stick back for crow.
Throttle stick central. Motor and brakes off.

Oh, and all of the rates are independent for each flight mode.

Please note that this thread is strictly for discussing features of the XPS-3216 transmitter. All posts concerning anything else will be deleted. I have been getting way too many complaints from people that are tired of sorting through general babble and bickering.

To clarify a misconception - our R/C business has not been somehow demoted to 5% of our business, the rest of our business has excelled tremendously due to the DivBee module and its use in home automation products. This insures that we will have inventory for all R/C devices that use this same technology.

Now, back the feature set...

Hi Jim:
I have a couple of questions about the new transmitter.
1. Would you consider selling a variety of switches such as spring loaded 3 position, push button etc. so that one might customize the switch layout to suit his or her needs?
2. Would it be possible to program a switch to do something like a slow or 8 point roll? And if so could you give a general procedure for how this would be done?
Thanks
Richard

Yes, individual switches will be available for purchasing separately.

Yes, it is possible to assign 'functions' to any switch. The function list is currently hard coded to 'snap roll', but I can add things as requested. The problem typically with things like this is that speed of the aircraft plays an important part of a successful maneuver. I am also a bit concerned (from a liability stand point) about having a slow roll, 4 point roll, 8 point roll, etc. If you initiate the maneuver and something happens to the aircraft (elevator departs) you don't want the aircraft locked into finishing a maneuver. So, some thought on that is going to be required - some way to abort the maneuver. Probably some percentage of stick input. I will have to think on that. I did have a 'record' feature in place where you could flip a switch and record 30 seconds of flight and play it back, but I thought this was also too risky with no abort mechanism.

Hold the switch and the programmed routine plays back, release the switch and it immediately aborts all programmed routines switching back to the mode the TX was in before hitting the switch. On the Microstar2000 you can program pretty much anything into the snap roll function and as soon as you release the switch that program is switched off and you go back to whatever configuration was present before the switch was pressed.

I was thinking more of something that would be user programmable, say for a 4 point roll the user could program the servo speed, timing, duration, etc. and assign it to a particular spring loaded switch and the maneuver would automatically be aborted as soon as the switch was released, as in a snap roll switch.
I would think that once the transmitter is available, some of the smart folks on this site would be able to come up with a sample program, for say a 4 point roll and post the procedure, then people like me would only need to tweak it for our particular models.

Richard

I have a better idee. Get somebody who can actually do the maneuver to do it and you sit one side and watch. This is going to far for me, to have a lot of features to help the pilot and make it easier for him is what we want, but for the radio to actually do the maneuvers is a few steps to far and takes the challenge out of the sport. If you get to a competition, who is getting the points, the pilot or the radio manufacturer? How will the judges know if it is the pilot doing the maneuver or not?

Yes, I know that if you don’t want to use it, you don’t have to, but now it takes the distinction between the superior pilot and the beginner out of the sport as everybody at the club is doing it (actually his radio) and the spectators will not cheer a pilot for an excellent performance anymore as they don’t know if it was him or the radio. Yes, I know other manufacturers will eventually all have it available, but I still don’t agree with it.

I'd be very leery about allowing the radio to perform any autopilot-style commands. The liability angle is pretty easy to follow. But I could also imagine an overly-enthusiastic government regulator painting the system as an unmanned flying robot of apocalyptic doom. And then the party's over for everyone.

A concept which could be used for aborting a sequence in mid-execution might be the use of a momentary switch. The sequence is only followed as long as the switch is depressed. To abort, just release. The problem here, though, is that the user just assigns that safety to a non-momentary toggle, and the safety is effectively defeated.

What I would very much like to see is this momentary switch idea applied to flight modes. In a full-house sailplane, for example, I could activate landing mode by holding a momentary switch. Flaps and/or crow (with all the elevator compensation and rudder mixing desired) would be active as long as I'm holding the switch. Then, when I'm a few inches off the ground, I release the switch, and >zip< all the control surfaces return to in-section configuration. It could save all kinds of grief and repairs involved in forgetting to raise flaps in time.

This concept would also work beautifully for launch mode, camber, reflex... Anything you might want to activate for a specific task, and then not have to worry about actively turning off. Like that time I did a whole F3F run in landing mode.... Really, it was just one time.... I swear.

(Thanks for cleaning up the thread again, Jim!)

Guess I should have hit refresh before posting that... Village Idiot and Richard beat me to it!

Anyway, one more vote for leaving out the autopilot stuff. Too risky, IMHO. (And, as Swen said, a cop-out if used for skill maneuvers.)

My intent was not to open a can of worms, as to if it would not be fair, fun, ethical, unsafe, etc. for someone to be able to do a particular maneuver by flipping a spring loaded switch, Is a snap roll switch unsafe, unfair, cheating, or just fun. The point of my question was more as to. What would be user programmable? I could just as well have used an example of, flipping a switch and having in sequence, the canopy open, the pilot raise his visor, turn is head, and salute. I think we get into trouble when we decide for someone else what fun is. I used to wonder how anyone could have fun with an ARF airplane and am always trying to introduce new people to the hobby to the joy of building their own models but most are content with their ARFs and as long as they are having fun who am I to judge.
Have attached a photo of one of my XPS conversions, have since removed the elevator and throttle and I can assure you that I have just as much (FUN) flying it as any multi pattern ship. BTW when I push the button the plane is programed to roll and will continue to roll as long as the button is pushed or until impact! is this unsafe?
Richard

Remember, there is a “fun” side and is considered a hobby, then there is the “sport” site where people are more serious about competition. Although it is still fun, there are strict rules as to what is allowed and what not and how things are done. It might just happen that the judges decide that they cannot monitor all radios of all participants for such programming and then just ban those radio’s with the ability to be programed as such.

Nice looking little plane btw.

Every radio I have owned has had a Snap Roll Switch. I have never used it, but it doesn't bother me that it is there. The only thing I could see is from a totally different perspective. If I could hit a switch, and the airplane would fly level 20 min in one direction, and then crash. that would be a bad switch to program. Talk about unmanned aircraft. If you limit your programming to things that only take 1 second or so to execute, I think you are OK. I probably still would not use that function, so don't make it part of your initial release. Less work = ship sooner.