OK - My turn for a question. Dual pilot mode.

[Wayne]

I'm thinking of an odd project that will need one pilot for part of the flight, and I'd like to add in a second pilot for a different segment of flight.

Rough thought is the second pilot is in student mode waiting. I'll flip a switch and activate the new flight segment and this will also allow the student access to the model. Once in the new flight segment, there is no going back, it stays in dual pilot mode until the plane lands, is wrecked, or both.

OK - Maybe not so much a question, but a thought process. Any ideas for other methods to pull this off?

Sorry I don't want to go into much detail at this time about the actual project.

 

[HENNY]

Hi Wayne. Pilot and Student, or Pilot and second Pilot in FRsky terms is called TRAINER mode. In trainer mode the pilot is alway the master, the student will have control as long as the momentary switch "SH" is held in the active condition. So if the student gets into trouble just let go of "SH" and the (Master) pilot has full control again.

Well thats how we use it at our field. There are other modes but am unsure if this is what you are referring to. This works with both a corded connection as well as wireless connections.

Henny

 

[gnichola]

Wayne, are you just talking about a trainer switch that won't unset? If so, you just want to use a sticky switch. In this example, I have disabled the off condition.

 

[Alois]

Hi Wayne
Just asking out of curiosity.
Are you looking for something like Trainer/Student (Master/Slave) where the Master radio is the radio that has connection to the plane the whole time. The student does just send his stick positions to the master radio. (Normally Trainer and Student do stand near to each other.)
Or do you have something in mind where the second radio when taking control really send his own signals to a receiver in the plane. (Student has his own connection to the radio even when master radio goes offline ???). This would require a different approach.

The first method is rather common with some minor differences in the radio setups.

The second one I've done once in the old 35Mhz times. Two different radios, each one had its own receiver in the plane. An extra device switching between the receivers (buddy-box).
The buddy box had 7 PWM Channels input from every receiver and one extra PWM channel input for the master radio to switch between master/slave on the seven output channel of the buddy-box.
Using modern receiver there would be the need to test whether sending telemetry could generate a problem for the second receiver.
In theory it might also be possible to connect a second receiver as redundancy. But I doubt that anyone has testet whether this works with the two receivers connected to different radios. Also switching may only work going into failesave on the master receiver.

 

[Alois]

Hint: If it ist a trainer/student situation and the second pilot is the one that should (and also can) finish the flight on his own behalf then I would use the second radio as the master radio. This would make it possible for the first pilot to turn off his radio and leave the spot.

 

[MikeB]

Two receivers with SBUS connecting them. Bind one to one Tx and the other to the second Tx. To swap pilots just turn the second Tx on and the first Tx off.

Mike

 

[Wayne]

Thanks all for the suggestions. - Sorry about the vague information given, it is currently a secret project that I very much look forward to sharing with you all if it works out, or if it fails.

The model will be using 2 receivers, yes, the trainer feature must be used. When switching over to the trainer mode, I also MUST switch over to alternate mixing as the flight behaviour of the model will be altered. Some flight surfaces changing to a different duty. This will be experimental and some free flight model testing will be the first step to confirm basic stability required for this to move forward.

@gnichola - Thank you - Will for sure be adding the sticky function. Once I engage the new pilot controls, I do not have the option of going back to single pilot control, attempting to do so would end in wreckage.

@Alois - Good questions about the 2 receivers. Yes, will need to use 2 receivers, but think the trainer mode will do fine for this application. Luckily the trainer feature in Ethos is more powerful than folks often realize. It will just get a bit creative as I will have to use more channels than normal. Basically in master mode, I will control all channels. When I flip a switch the channels sources will occur, and 3 channels will be controlled by the trainer radio.

Pretty sure I have the programming side figured out, just need to work on the aerodynamics and structural design to pull this off.

I look forward to sharing more on this once it has flown. Will grab video for sure.