I have printed and assembled one of Mr. Baddeley's Baby R2 droids. He has all of the instructions for getting the droid moving, but I wanted to add sounds as well. This guide will cover the modifications to the droid. For more info on how to build the droid itself check out his patreon.
Additional Hardware used:
- Ardunio Nano | Compatible Models
- DF Mini Player | Compatible Models
- SD Card
- 1K Resistor
I wanted to keep as much of Mr. Baddeley's design in place as possible, so I decided to power my setup through the FS-iA6B.
You can also send commands to the arduino via the FS-iA6B by connecting the arduino to the iBus output. You will need to connect the Arduino to the iBus of the FS-iA6B as shown.
I formatted my micro SD card using FAT32.
All of the sound files are in the MP3 Files directory. You will need to copy these to your SD card. The order that they are copied onto the SD card matters. I started with the first file and copied them over one at a time.
If you are on a mac you may need to follow the directions here to clean up the dot files after copying everything over.
Once everything is copied over you can put it into the DF Mini Player
You should be able to place the baby_r2_sounds.ino file into a folder called baby_r2_sounds and then open that up in the Arduino software.
You will need to install the following libraries using the Arduino library manager:
- iBusBM
- AltSoftSerial
- DFRobotDFPlayerMini
Then open up that file and flash your board with it. You can find step-by-step directions for flashing by selecting your board here.
Tip: Your computer may not be able to communicate with your nano if you have your RC reciever connected to pin RX0 of the nano. If you are having trouble flashing remove that cable and try again.
This project assumes that you have all 10 channels enabled on your Flysky i6 or i6X transmitter. It also assumes that you have the channels 5-10 assigned as follows:
- Ch5: VAA
- Ch6: VAB
- Ch7: SWA
- Ch8: SWB
- Ch9: SWC
- Ch10: SWD
I found this video helpful in getting my tranmitter set up. The only difference is that I left my output mode in PWM. Switching to PPM doesn't seem necessary for getting channels 7-10 set up.
Troubleshooting the transmitter
If things aren't working one thing to check is if your receiver is sending the correct values to the nano. To do this you can edit the code to turn debugTransmitter on.
bool debugTransmitter = true; // Set serial monitor to 115200
After you make this change:
- Upload those changes to your nano
- Open the serial monitor in the Arduino software
- Set the serial monitor rate to 115200
- Turn your RC transmitter on and change the volume and/or toggle the toggle switches
If things are working you should see the updated values for each channel in the serial monitor.
For whatever reason I've found that your FlySky transmitter (controller) has to be turned off when you power up the receiver in order for the code to execute properly.
- Plug your battery into your FS-1A6B. This should power up your RC receiver, your servos, your nano, and your DF mini.
- Power up your transmitter. (If you haven't paired the reciever to the transmitter you will need to do that. The steps for that are outside the scope of this repo.)
| Brand | Supported | Not Supported |
|---|---|---|
| MakerFocus | X |
| Brand | Supported | Not Supported |
|---|---|---|
| HiLetgo | X | |
| DFRobot | X |