This is a companion topic for our recent blog post on blog.unmanned.tech
Joshua Bardwell has bestowed upon us the delightful news that we can now wave goodbye to those pesky Sik telemetry radios. Instead, we can embrace the single ELRS link that carries MAVLink—because who doesn’t like simplifying their lives? This little upgrade means we can finally enjoy a symmetrical link for both RC control and vehicle telemetry, thus reducing our hardware woes and potential for disasters.
But let’s not get too carried away; the catch here is that your standard ELRS receivers tend to play hard to get with asymmetric telemetry. The solution? A bit of clever tinkering to flash a powerful transmit module into a receiver (TX-as-RX), enabling you to run ELRS in MAVLink mode while cleverly forwarding Mission Planner traffic over UDP through the module’s Wi-Fi. One radio, one link—what could possibly go wrong?
Dare I say, wiring might be required. You’ll need to dive into a bit of soldering to connect UART pads inside the Bandit module and ensure that all your telemetry power settings are appropriately adjusted—because nobody wants fried flight controllers, do they? Just remember to power it directly from the main battery; trust me, the FC regulator will thank you later.
In summary, if you’re keen on ditching extra radios and fancy a more streamlined approach to your ArduPilot setups, then this is quite the game changer. Just be prepared for some lag when using higher packet rates—it’s all part of the experience, right? If you’re feeling brave, check out the full video for further enlightenment.
Read the full post over at: