My son had a broken Silverlit helicopter, so I decided to upgrade the Infrared Remote Control to RF using the Cheap TX433 module.
- The remote control has one joystick, one sliding pot for the accelerator, one switch for the channel selection, and a few buttons for the light and the trim.
- I removed the CPU and created a small board with the PICAXE 14m2 connecting with wires all the inputs from the sensors (joysticks, pot, switch and buttons). The joystick and pot are connected on the ADC channels, and the buttons on the C pins that accept interrupts.
- I had also to file down the plastic path in the joystick to let it freely move in 2 directions. I don't know why they were constrain it in one direction at a time.
- The picaxe is powered from the regulator already existing on the board which provides 5V, while the TX433 was connected to the full battery power 6x1.5 = 9V to increase the range.
- The basic program reads in an infinite loop all sensors and if something has changed (Delta-ADC > 2) then it emits through the TX433 the reading of the sensors and a checksum. Periodically (almost every 2s) even if the values are the same it emits again the last reading.
- The TX433 claims that has a range of a few 100m meters outdoors, which is good enough for my purpose.
I am currently use it to control my robot, with very nice results
Convert an IR remote control to RF 433MHz
- CPU: PICAXE 14m2
- Power source: 6 AA batteries
- Programming language: Basic
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://community.robotshop.com/robots/show/upgrade-silverlit-remove-control-with-tx433-and-picaxe