Until recently my main TX was a Turnigy 9X and I (like many others) was using a hacked in 6 position POT switch to select modes on my various aircraft. Unfortunately the 9X has died so has been replaced by a shiny new 9XR. Rather then hack apart the 9XR (too pretty) I wanted to experiment with using the existing controls to select modes on my aircraft. I have seen several tutorials on this but none met all of my requirements below. Apologies if I have simply rediscovered something already posted by someone else.
Not relying on guessing the position of the continuous POT switches
Gives a easy to read visual indicator of current mode
Uses only a single radio channel
All performed with the default software and hardware – no flashing/hacking required
The method I used was to combine the 3 position switch (ID0/1/2) with the Aileron Dir switch. Between these two switches there are six possible combinations which neatly matches the 6 modes of the APM ecosystem.I am using an 8 channel system and wanted to only use one channel for mode. To do this I created a “fake” channel 9 representing the position of the aileron switch which I then mixed with the results of the 3 position switch to achieve 6 switch combinations.
Instructions
Step 1 – On the SETUP 02 page for the model in question change the Proto setting to add additional channels to the model (10CH in my example). As the hardware I use can only send/receive 8 channels these will be ignored by the TX/RX module.Step 2 – on the MIXER page for the model Set the following Mixes (note that all values are minuses)
CH5 -100% CH9 ID0
-35% CH9 ID1
-10% CH9 ID2
CH9 -125% FULL AIL