Hi,
I recently bought a tarot 650f frame and a pixhawk in hope of building a quadcopter, I’m a little confused with the tx/rx situation.
I’m wanting to spend around £100 ($165), from experience which pixhawk compatible transmitter and reciever would suit me best in the price range?
Thanks so much for your help,
Duncan
@dunc201,
There are two ways that you can go:
Buy the traditional R/C transmitter and receiver (Spektrum/Futaba/Turnigy/etc.) with enough channels to suit your needs and use a PPM encoder (http://store.3drobotics.com/products/ppm-encoder) to encode the PWM output of the receiver into serial PPM and send to the Pixhawk RC input. Or
Buy a Spektrum R/C transmitter and receiver that has a Remote Receiver, besides the standard receiver, and use the Remoter Receiver with the Pixhawk Spektrum Remote Receiver input or buy a Futaba R/C transmitter and S. Bus receiver and use the Pixhawk RC input: http://copter.ardupilot.com/wiki/common-pixhawk-wiring-and-quick-start/
Regards,
TCIII Developer
Hi,
In addition to what TC3 has to say,
If you go Spektrum which uses the satellite receivers only, keep in mind that total range is more limited due to the satellite receiver not having as much range as a full size receiver with or without satellites.
You also need a full sized receiver in order to prebind the satellite receivers to the transmitter.
Works really well though just did this today with a PX4 myself. 
Turnigy 9X or 9XR from Hobbyking works well but you need to add an FR SKy module and an FRSKy PPM compatible receiver.
The really great way to go is with FRSKy Taranis transmitter and PPM-Sum receiver, but that is a bit over $200.00 and Taranis is still hard to get they are in so much demand.
@ Gary Below, please see Taranis above most highly recommended! 
Also FRSky now builds the Delta 8 PPM-SUM receiver which is compatible with Hitec Aurora or Futaba transmitters.
Best Regards,
Gary
The other radio getting good reviews is the Taranis from FRSKY
frsky-rc.co.uk/frsky-news-fr … ry-modules
I bet we have all made this more confusing 
[quote=“TCIII”]@dunc201,
There are two ways that you can go:
Buy the traditional R/C transmitter and receiver (Spektrum/Futaba/Turnigy/etc.) with enough channels to suit your needs and use a PPM encoder (http://store.3drobotics.com/products/ppm-encoder) to encode the PWM output of the receiver into serial PPM and send to the Pixhawk RC input. Or
Buy a Spektrum R/C transmitter and receiver that has a Remote Receiver, besides the standard receiver, and use the Remoter Receiver with the Pixhawk Spektrum Remote Receiver input or buy a Futaba R/C transmitter and S. Bus receiver and use the Pixhawk RC input: http://copter.ardupilot.com/wiki/common-pixhawk-wiring-and-quick-start/
Regards,
TCIII Developer[/quote]
ah right, i have gotten my head how it works now haha! thank you
[quote=“gary”]Hi,
In addition to what TC3 has to say,
If you go Spektrum which uses the satellite receivers only, keep in mind that total range is more limited due to the satellite receiver not having as much range as a full size receiver with or without satellites.
You also need a full sized receiver in order to prebind the satellite receivers to the transmitter.
Works really well though just did this today with a PX4 myself.
Turnigy 9X or 9XR from Hobbyking works well but you need to add an FR SKy module and an FRSKy PPM compatible receiver.
The really great way to go is with FRSKy Taranis transmitter and PPM-Sum receiver, but that is a bit over $200.00 and Taranis is still hard to get they are in so much demand.
@ Gary Below, please see Taranis above most highly recommended!
Also FRSky now builds the Delta 8 PPM-SUM receiver which is compatible with Hitec Aurora or Futaba transmitters.
Best Regards,
Gary[/quote]
right okay, so if i bought the spektrum dx6i i would be able to use it with the pixhawk but the range would simply be reduced? is there a way to get around this with the dx6i and how much is the range reduced by do you know?
although i have heard that the 9x and especially the 9xr are poor build quality and often break/develop faults down the line? i am simply after a quality transmitter which will last!
thanks for all youre help!
[quote=“GaryMortimer”]The other radio getting good reviews is the Taranis from FRSKY
frsky-rc.co.uk/frsky-news-fr … ry-modules
I bet we have all made this more confusing [/quote]
ah that seems like a decent product! and affordable as well! no haha, the support and information you get from forums is amazing!
thanks
if i bought the spektrum dx6i, would it be compatible with the pixhawk if i used this module:
hobbyking.com/hobbyking/stor … II_RX.html
and used this reciever:
Hi Dunc,
Don’t get the Spektrum 6XI, You should get at least the DX7 if you are going to do Spektrum.
It is possible there are other (Non-Spektrum PPM Sum receivers available, but I cannot confirm this.
If you are planning on using Spektrum with Spektrum receiver, the only choice is to use one of the Spektrum Satellites which do have reduced range, more park flyer range, generally OK with Quadcopters if you don’t fly too far away.
The only bad thing about the Taranis is that they are hard to get because production so far has been inadequate I would most highly recommend that one if you can get it.
I am using a 3DR PPM-Sum encoder with a regular receiver on my Hitec Aurora 9 and I don’t like it because the PPM Encoder uses too much power (requiring battery hookup for tuning) and because it has been somewhat flaky.
I am also now using a Spektrum DX7 with a Spektrum satellite receiver which I like better but I currently only have a 2 position mode select because of the way the available switches are laid out (I don’t know if I can fix that).
In the future I will be buying the special multiplatform FRSky Delta 8 receivers to use with my Hitec Aurora 9 transmitter because I really like my Aurora 9 (Translates as easy to program and I know how to program it).
If I were starting from scratch the only one I would consider would be the FRSky Taranis transmitter.
Excellent price and great quality and total compatibility with PPM-SUM also open source programability.
The Turnigy 9X or 9XR are inexpensive choices from Hobbyking, but you still need to add the FRSky transmitter module to make them compatible with their PPM-Sum receivers and by the time you add in the cost of the module it isn’t that much cheaper than a Taranis.
Basically if you can find one, get a Taranis even if you have to get it shipped from Timbuktu. 
In case you don’t know, if you are in the US at least you will want a mode 2 transmitter, not mode 1.
Regards,
Gary
Ok, this is getting too much off topic now, and I’m closing this thread. For further advice on quality and features of R/C systems, please go e.g. to RC Groups.
Bottom line:
Any system that provides PPM out, SBUS out or a Spectrum satellite receiver will work with the Pixhawk.