RC/FPV Ground Station

The ground station has now reached a working prototype stage, although the version shown here is not fully assembled. The upper display is there purely for analog FPV viewing and recording. There are still things to improve, and things I would have done differently now that I’ve tested the unit in the field.

With digital FPV systems now beginning to mature, the ground station is not as future-proof as I would have liked. If I return to the idea in future, I would likely develop more of the electronics and PCBs specifically for the application, rather than relying so heavily on repackaged off-the-shelf hardware. That should allow for a smaller and more ergonomic unit, with better battery life, charging and connectivity.

With the model now complete and the parts printed, I’ve bonded the sections together and begun sanding, filling and surface prep to get the enclosure into a state that can be painted. It should make a big difference to how convincing the final assembly looks and feels.

The enclosure model is starting to come together as one coherent unit. At the moment my main focus is refining the folding upper display, rear housing and side sections. I’m still revising the model and printing updated parts to test as the design develops.

The separate sub-assemblies have now progressed far enough that I can start joining them together and modelling the enclosure around them. I can now work out the overall width, proportions and ergonomics. Even in this state, it is starting to look much closer to what I had in mind at the beginning.

I’ve moved further into the internal packaging and electronics integration. The display hardware, VRX and DVR need to be stripped out of their original housings and repackaged into the ground station alongside the TX16S internals.

At the moment there are a lot of loose boards, wiring runs, printed brackets and test-fits. I’m just making sure everything coexists in a sensible way.

One of the most complicated parts of this build so far has been the TX16S breakout PCB. It is connected to the mainboard via a ribbon cable. This is where the gimbals and switches are connected, where the trim switches are mounted, and where the IC that controls the 6-position switches and their LEDs is located.

Because of that, I’ve designed an intermediate PCB that sits between the original TX16S mainboard and breakout PCB. That then interfaces with a new set of smaller L-shaped trim switch PCBs, allowing the trim switches to be relocated into position around the gimbals while still keeping the original system working as it should.

I’ve started work on a ground station built around a TX16S for RC/FPV use. The aim is to integrate the TX, analog FPV display, VRX and DVR into a single unit, rather than having separate equipment, batteries and cables to set up every time I want to fly or test an idea.

At the moment I’m mostly trying to work out whether everything can be packaged into a usable form factor. That means measuring up the TX16S internals and the other hardware that will need to fit into the new enclosure, then printing smaller test parts to confirm access and clearances before committing to printing the larger enclosure sections.

I’m also planning to use 3-axis gimbals, as I’d like this ground station to be usable across a variety of RC projects.