[Paparazzi-devel] MaxStream 9XTend OEM Rf Module and Tiny 13 Serial Connection

[John Koches]

Gentlemen,

 

More progress to report.  Weather here has turned cold and it has even been snowing lately, which is actually good news in that I don't have anything ready to throw in the air anyway!

 

I thought about it some more and went ahead and ordered an new Muliplex Twin Star II.  I started looking at the aircraft configurations and thought it might be easier to start out with something that you had already created.  The kit arrived a couple days ago and I haven't even had a chance to open it up.  I also went ahead and ordered a Panasonic ToughBook with Debian already installed!  I have had real good luck with the old Dell that I found and the system I installed, but I am actually starting to envision a time when I have a plane in the air and I thought I would be happier if I knew the laptop wasn't going to give out on me!  Finally, I ordered the MaxStream 9XTend-PKG-U and the 9XTend OEM RF Module.  They arrive yesterday.  I have been looking at the pinouts on the RF Module and been comparing those with the pinouts on the Tiny and am a little confused.  I think I could figure it out, but I thought I would write just to be safe.

 

As I understand this, the GPS is all internal on the board and I don't need to plug anything in, so that is taken care of.  There are 7 servo headers although I will be using only 4 or maybe 5 with the Twin Star, I suspect you split the ailerons using two servos, but I haven looked that up yet.  I will probably use one more servo connection before it is all over so that I can activate the camera shutter using an IR emitter.  The RC header goes to the ppm radio receiver.  The Analog header accepts the leads from the IR horizon sensor.  I haven't actually looked at this yet either, but that makes sense to me at this point.  My question comes regarding the two remaining serial ports.  It looks like Serial 1 is to be used by the ISP Serial Bootloader.  I even found a picture that someone provided that shows this port connected to the PC USB cable.  I am going to assume then that the RF Module is connected to the ten pin header on Serial 2 as shown in the pinout diagram.  That would mean that the Serial 1 port is left open most of the time unless it is physically connected to a computer through the USB cable.

 

So, assuming I have this right thus far, here is my question!  The MaxStream RF Module has a straight out "20-pin mini connector".  But it only has 11 pins that are actually used, and most of those aren't required.  I am having trouble figuring out which pins on the RF Module goes to which pins on the tiny.  The naming convention used to describe and document the two devices are just a bit different.   Pin 1 and 2 on both are gnd and volts respectively.  And it looks like pin 5 and 6 on the MaxStream (Data In, Data Out) line up with pins 5 and 6 on the Tiny (Data Out, Data In), but to be honest I am not sure.  And that still leave 7 pins coming out of the RF Module and only 6 pins left on the Tiny.  Maybe if someone has a minute they could clarify this issue for me. 

 

Thanks one more time for all of your help.

 

jkk