Support for 16 channels?

Would it be possible to support 16 PPM channels?
Is anyone else interested in it?
Could the extra two be passed through to unused motor ports?
Even the ability to assign 1-10 to internal commands, and pass through the last 6 would be helpful in comparison to the 14 channels available now.

(I’ve got a copter with two gimbals, landing gear, lights, various internal commands (RTL, MotorStop, Auto, etc), and am using 16 channels. I’m looking at using the new RFD900 modem w/ RC passthrough, but then the pixhawk will need to decode all 16 channels, rather than having a traditional RX doing 9-16)

So, I’m curious if others are using so many channels, and if there’s any hope of it being supported by arducopter at some point in the future.

Thanks

Hi,

It is possible to support 16 channels, but I would wait to do it until the new RC input/output library is done. The current library is kind of a mess, with input mixed with output, and many hacks spread around the code to get around it. It will probably take a while until this is done though. There is an issue opened to track this (https://github.com/ArduPilot/ardupilot/issues/3337)

Thank you for replying.
SBUS is an option for me. But even then I only see the ability to define up through channel 14 in mission planner.
Maybe I am missing another setting that defines the max channels that are available to configure or something? I’ll see if I can find anything… Or is it a Mission Planner issue, where it isn’t set up to support more than 14 channels?

With SBUS you can do pass-through to the outputs up to channel 16, but for input configuration it is limited to 14.

Hi,

maybe this helps http://diydrones.com/profiles/blogs/building-flying-and-not-crashing-a-large-octaquadplane
https://hobbyking.com/de_de/sbd4-4-channel-s-bus-decoder.html