Plane, radio, altimeter and Arduino details

This article, part of the Arduino Radio Control Model Plane Altitude Hold series, describes the hardware environment for the project.

None of this hardware will be altered in this project.

Arduino

I’ll be using the duinotech Nano for this project. I bought mine as part of the Basic Experimenter Kit for Arduino from Jaycar Electronics.

There’s a handy pinout diagram for this nano device.

Altimeter

I have an obsolete Eagle Tree Microsensor Altimeter v3 that I’ll use in this project . This altimeter can communicate with an Arduino over the I2C bus, using the Wire.h library. Eagle Tree has published details about using the I2C bus of the device in Using Eagle Tree Microsensor V3/V4 Sensors with your Microcontroller Project. An online manual is available.

Unfortunately, this altimeter has a resolution of only ~1 metre. That’s adequate for my purposes. There are lots of alternatives that also use the I2C bus for communications and have more impressive accuracy.

Aircraft

My trusty Parkzone Radian will be the platform for this project. I adore my Radian, and have had many happy hours flying it. It’s stability and simplicity make it a good candidate. Mine has throttle, elevator and rudder controls only (it isn’t the ‘Pro’ version, and lacks ailerons and flaps).

Radio

A Spektrum DX6i has been my primary radio transmitter since 2010. I like to use a Spektrum AR6200 receiver in my Radian. Virtually any typical transmitter & receiver ought to work fine with this project.

Electronic Speed Control

My Radian came with an ESC included. Virtually any ESC ought to work fine with this project.

Servos

My Radian came with servos included. Virtually any traditional servos ought to work fine with this project.