Turnigy 9X Resistor Fix

**Update Jul 2011** Created a new post and an instructional video on how to do this fix on the wireless module, which is much easier and does not require cracking open the main radio body

A couple months ago I received my Turnigy 9X radio. For the price, I couldn't be happier. When I purchased the transmitter, I expected to be taking it apart and tinkering with it. I happened to drop the radio, almost brand new, breaking off a switch and forcing me to crack it open. While open, I figured I could take care of the resistor fix while the thing was open.

The Resistor Fix

What people refer to as the 'resistor fix' solves the fairly annoying problem that in order to use the training port on the Turnigy 9X, you must unplug the 2.4GHz module. Not usually a problem to unplug a wireless module, but someone decided it would be nice to hardwire the antenna to radio on the 9X. Unplugging the 9X wireless module leaves the wireless module dangling on thin fragile coax.

Read the rest of this article at my other blog, RCShenanigans >>>

Installing and Compiling Ogre3d code with Ubuntu 11.04

I finally successfully compiled the Ogre3d example code. Hooray! It wasn't as straight forward as it should have been.

I installed the ogre libraries from the Ogre PPA. Should have been that simple, right? Not so much. I am running Ubuntu 11.04, 64bit. Most of the Ogre resources are configured for paths for Fedora/RedHat which installs everything in /usr/local/OGRE/. Ubuntu/Debian distros install ogre stuff in /usr/OGRE/. I outline below where you need to make some changes.

Here are the steps that I took

1. Follow the steps here to install all of the prerequisites. As a note, the boost packages might not install because the dependecies are for version 1.42 but you may already have version 1.46 of the boost libraries installed.
2. Follow the steps here and install the ogre libraries through the Ubuntu PPA. You should also be able to install the ogre-samples-media and ogre-samples-src packages
3. Follow the instructions here to compile the base example program with CMake. I had to also install the cmake-qt-gui. There are a couple modifications that need to be made to get the instructions to work.
   
   1. Modify CMakeLists.txt by changing all references pointing to /usr/local/ to just /usr/. This corrects the following cmake errors
      CMAKE_BUILD_TYPE RelWithDebinfo
CMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX /usr/local
OGRE_DIR OGRE_DIR-NOTFOUND
OID_DIR OID_DIR-NOTFOUND
   2. Before running make install in the tutorial, you also must modify plugins.cfg and change all references from /usr/local/ to just /usr/. There should be 2 if I remember correctly.

If all goes well, you should get this

Hooray! Now, why was this so difficult?

Arduino High Current Motor Shield from Sparkfun

Now there is a source for something like this!

Looks like Sparkfun decided to make their own high current motor shield for the Arduino. Beware, the page says 41V and 30A right now, but it uses the same chips that my shield uses, which shutoff somewhere between 16V and 22V.

However, I am still planning to make an even more powerful, higher voltage motor controller (version 2) that can handle brushless motors as well.