Angelos
Key Veteran
Location: nr Oxford, OX11, UK
| You may not know it but a GameBoy Advance is based on an ARM7 CPU and has computational power several times more than the CPU of a Futaba 9Z and battery life exceeding 10 hours.
My point is that the 9Z was designed more than 10 years ago and it is now very old for modern standards. I must admit it does the job, but the job could be done better.
I have developed several programs for GameBoy in the past using GameBoy as a controller for small robots. Recently I found this adapter card which is very interesting.
http://www.charmedlabs.com/
The card has an on-board programmable FPGA which someone could use to interface to digital I/O and ADC. It could for example be used to read the analogue signals coming from the joysticks and produce the PPM or even PCM signal after processing the data on the GameBoy.
I have even found ports of a few real-time operating systems for GameBoy Advance which makes life even easier.
I have just dug out my old futaba challenger which I plan to use just for the joysticks but it continently includes a separete PCB which is the actual transmitter circuit. With a bit of work I should be able to have a fixed wing model in the air within days, then concentrate on developing more advanced functions such as curves etc.
My plan for now is just to attach the gamboy on top of the old challenger, but in the future I could make a better housing for it or even design my own single board computer and abandon GameBoy.
Anyone want to give me hand for an open source project? You must be very competent with C language and willing to invest in the required hardware (Gameboy, Xport card, a second hand Futaba Challenger and a few electronic components). Come on... what else could you want... it even has color screen!
Not convinced?... have a look at GamePac which is based on an ARM9 32bit CPU running to nearly 100MHz. This think can play MP3s!...it would certainly be powerful enough to run a flight simulator when you are not flying the real thing! |
