Turning An Previous Telephone’s Motherboard Into An RC Airplane Controller

Upcycling smartphones makes quite a lot of sense, particularly since they comprise so many parts that stay helpful lengthy after their desirability as a smartphone has pale. In the case of [Mountain DS Lab], they opted to make use of an 8-year outdated Xiaomi Mi 8 cellphone to add long-range FPV video link and remote control functionality to an RC airplane, utilizing the cellphone’s LTE mobile connectivity.

The smartphone was purchased used for $23, with the default Xiaomi ROM overwritten by LineageOS to get a extra light-weight and updated Android set up on it. From the video it’s clear that this cellphone has seen higher days, with the glass again cracked and some ugly traces operating throughout the show. Fortunately all that’s wanted is the motherboard itself.

One gotcha right here is that the OS checks for the show on boot and can time-out if it’s not current, doubtlessly halting the method totally. The workaround requires disabling the show within the system tree, which is finished by modifying the boot.img file as defined within the video. Next a customized bracket for the motherboard was printed in order that it may very well be fitted contained in the goal airplane.

To talk with the avionics, a USB-to-UART adapter PCB was created with a CH340 IC on it. This was then linked collectively for an preliminary take a look at, with the prolonged entrance digital camera getting used because the FPV digital camera for the customized Android software. Using the controller by way of the distant LTE hyperlink labored with the flight controller, so subsequent the airplane was assembled for preliminary testing.

From this level it’s all fairly normal RC airplane meeting and testing, simply with the everyday RF-based management and FPV hyperlink changed with the LTE hyperlink. Unfortunately flying drones isn’t permitted within the quick space the place the creator lives, so just some taxiing was tried previous to its maiden flight at a neighborhood airstrip that will probably be featured in an upcoming video.

Naturally, this isn’t the primary time that somebody has tried one of these distant management, with the continuing Russo-Ukraine struggle being a major instance of LTE-based distant management of drones. Although we don’t advocate wiping out a 3rd of a nation’s strategic bomber fleet with upcycled smartphones, finally this is similar expertise and a great way to create an RC drone that may final greater than the few kilometers eked out from a 2.4 GHz hyperlink or so. Just be ready for the LTE hyperlink so as to add a couple of milliseconds of latency.