By far the most challenging and the most expensive parts of this hobby is the Transmitter or TX. When first starting it seems like these quads are so cheap and the kits everyone sells are affordable but on second glance you realize that what holds you back is the TX. Most kits don’t come RTF (Ready to Fly with TX, Batteries and everything) and BNF which means you have to supply your own, but not all TX are created equally.
Some use PPM some use Serial transmissions some are programable some aren’t, some speak to you, others are quite….. you get the idea they are all different. What’s even worst than that is there is no standard protocol, they all speak different digital “codes”to communicate between the TX and the Receivers (RX), so a Spektrum RX can’t bind to a FrSky TX and so forth. This can all get quite frustrating, luckily for us we have a solution to this issue called modules.
The one above is a Tatic Anylink2 SLT 2.4 GHZ Radio Adaptor Module (thats a mouthful). It is the one I needed to bind the Proto-X SLT to this Spektrum DX6, I read it connected through the trainer port and it has it’s own 1s battery inside so it seemed like a perfect fit.
Most of the “toy grade” micros out there don’t really have a way to bind to a hobby grade TX so when I originally set out to buy a toy quad I had the intentions to one day fly it with the same TX that flew all of the other builds. This was the dream anyway and so far I have been able to make this true, which is why I am loving this TX so much. I looked around for a possible way to do this and found the Proto-X and several other micros out there that are SLT, Ready To Fly, and Bind-N-Fly too.
I really wanted to also control a hubsan I was planning on getting to mod out so I did some research and found it was possible to make a hack module by sniffing the protocols coming out of the proprietary TXs. This seemed great but a little more effort than I wanted to go through to make this all work, but looking deeper I found a lord and savior. I met a fellow by the handle of Goebish on both RCgroups.com and MMW-Community, he is one of the Deviation Devs and makes these modules. He is based in France and does a great job with these modules. I’v had mine for a little over 2 months and it working awesome. Extended range, the 1000mAh battery I’m using lasts for what seems weeks, and it lets you control all the addition features like lights on and off ,camera record start/stop, and snap picture (although you would need an 8channel + to control the last two).
I’m currently waiting for another module he makes called the Multi-Pro which should cover a broad range of other toy grade drones. I can’t wait, and man 2-3 weeks is a definite wait for this little guy.
Ultimately the DX6 was the best mix of what I needed from a TX. If I had the chance to buy again, I think I would have gone with a DX8 only because I eventually want to control a gimbal and would be limited with only one extra channel. I planned on flying lots of DSM2/DMSX builds with the scisky having a built in RX, and the Nano-QX being readily available also can bind to Spektrum TXs. Another option would have been the Orange Module, which gives you DSM2/DSMX on any TX but where harder to come by. If this had not been the case I would have gone with a Taranis. I am over all very happy with the DX6 and bang for buck was what I needed. Spektrum has just release the DXE, a sub $100 TX that is programable via the computer or a phone app so it might be a great buy for those of us looking to just have fun and not break the bank.
MicroDroneGuys 