Is FrSky Taranis arguably better than Futaba?

GhostMaster said:
Khudson7 said:
GhostMaster said:
Here is the video about the 9.5KM range with the stock Taranis and the L9R eceiver: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0lxLJOLr7xQ
Actually, i was giving this some further thought...
Yes, it is a further testament to the Taranis that it can handle that 10km range, but it appears from the video the pilot was using a plane. I would think a phantom would not be able to do that, mainly because I would not expect the battery to last long enough to do so. But it does say something about the signal strength in the Taranis.
So what? I didnt said it was with a phantom, i said its possible...

No Futaba can reach 10km with stock receiver and transmitter.
Change both antennas and 15km would be possible...


I would expect a phantom to be too electronically noisy to get the same 10k range even if the battery could do it. i'm not disputing the range differentials between the manufacturers though.
 
GhostMaster said:
So what? I didnt said it was with a phantom, i said its possible...

No Futaba can reach 10km with stock receiver and transmitter.
Change both antennas and 15km would be possible...
Yes I certainly do understand and appreciate the point you are making. As to that point of signal strength, the RTH feature on the phantom, although nice to know it is there (in case you do something stupid like purposely fly behind a building or something to break the signal), along with that RSSI, means the chances of one having to go through that heart stopping moments and complete and utter panic, for those few minutes which seem like hours, when the signal is lost,and hoping... praying desperately, that the RTH feature works and it does not hit a tree on the way back... is NOT something I have ever had to endure. I know for me, I have tested the RTH feature just to make sure it works(and of course it does), but I have NEVER had to actually use or depend on it. The signal strength has always been so strong. I have never once had to experience that fear of it going to RTH because of lost signal.
Thanks for your input.
 
I am thinking about getting a Taranis X9D. The specs say up to 16 channels. What needs to be done to get 16 channels? Is it just programming or are 2 receivers needed?
 
jimandsue60 said:
I am thinking about getting a Taranis X9D. The specs say up to 16 channels. What needs to be done to get 16 channels? Is it just programming or are 2 receivers needed?
I will try and make a stab at answering this although I have not had a need for, or done any of this in practice. I invite anyone else that has more experience to jump in and correct this.

First, Frisky has a large selection of different receivers for different functions. It appears that most Taranis are shipped with the X8R. This is a 16 channel SBUS receiver but only has 8 conventional output plugs along with an SBUS port. The Phantom does utilize SBUS so when connecting the phantom to receiver via X2 port, the first 7 channels will be taken. Therefore if you need to manually plug in more servos not on the SBUS, there is only one conventional port left to use with the X8R. However as you must have read, you can get two X8Rs in daisy chain to give you a total of 16 conventional output plugs if you need to wire the channels manually, not thru SBUS. At least, this is my understanding.

If this is for a phantom I can not imagine using all those external outputs, but I may be wrong. I have actually used the extra 9-16 channels on the radio to do some trick programming (within the radio, does not do anything on the phantom because these channels are not hooked up there)

Sure would like to hear how you plan to use all those channels. Best of luck.
 
Khudson7 said:
jimandsue60 said:
I am thinking about getting a Taranis X9D. The specs say up to 16 channels. What needs to be done to get 16 channels? Is it just programming or are 2 receivers needed?
I will try and make a stab at answering this although I have not had a need for, or done any of this in practice. I invite anyone else that has more experience to jump in and correct this.

First, Frisky has a large selection of different receivers for different functions. It appears that most Taranis are shipped with the X8R. This is a 16 channel SBUS receiver but only has 8 conventional output plugs along with an SBUS port. The Phantom does utilize SBUS so when connecting the phantom to receiver via X2 port, the first 7 channels will be taken. Therefore if you need to manually plug in more servos not on the SBUS, there is only one conventional port left to use with the X8R. However as you must have read, you can get two X8Rs in daisy chain to give you a total of 16 conventional output plugs if you need to wire the channels manually, not thru SBUS. At least, this is my understanding.

If this is for a phantom I can not imagine using all those external outputs, but I may be wrong. I have actually used the extra 9-16 channels on the radio to do some trick programming (within the radio, does not do anything on the phantom because these channels are not hooked up there)

Sure would like to hear how you plan to use all those channels. Best of luck.

I am planning on using this on a 450 or 550 with Naza V2. Right now I am using a 9 channel Hitec Aurora 9 and need more channels, this radio does not do S-bus. I need 4 channels for basic controls (aileron/elevator/yaw and throttle), 2 channels for IOC and gps/atti/manual, 1 channel for failsafe, 3 channels to control pitch/roll and mode selection on my 3 axis gimbal, 1 channel for lights, 1 channel for a video selection between go pro and fpv camera, and 1 channel for a release mechanism. I may have missed one :)

Thanks for your input.
 
jimandsue60 said:
Khudson7 said:
jimandsue60 said:
I am thinking about getting a Taranis X9D. The specs say up to 16 channels. What needs to be done to get 16 channels? Is it just programming or are 2 receivers needed?
I will try and make a stab at answering this although I have not had a need for, or done any of this in practice. I invite anyone else that has more experience to jump in and correct this.

First, Frisky has a large selection of different receivers for different functions. It appears that most Taranis are shipped with the X8R. This is a 16 channel SBUS receiver but only has 8 conventional output plugs along with an SBUS port. The Phantom does utilize SBUS so when connecting the phantom to receiver via X2 port, the first 7 channels will be taken. Therefore if you need to manually plug in more servos not on the SBUS, there is only one conventional port left to use with the X8R. However as you must have read, you can get two X8Rs in daisy chain to give you a total of 16 conventional output plugs if you need to wire the channels manually, not thru SBUS. At least, this is my understanding.

If this is for a phantom I can not imagine using all those external outputs, but I may be wrong. I have actually used the extra 9-16 channels on the radio to do some trick programming (within the radio, does not do anything on the phantom because these channels are not hooked up there)

Sure would like to hear how you plan to use all those channels. Best of luck.

I am planning on using this on a 450 or 550 with Naza V2. Right now I am using a 9 channel Hitec Aurora 9 and need more channels, this radio does not do S-bus. I need 4 channels for basic controls (aileron/elevator/yaw and throttle), 2 channels for IOC and gps/atti/manual, 1 channel for failsafe, 3 channels to control pitch/roll and mode selection on my 3 axis gimbal, 1 channel for lights, 1 channel for a video selection between go pro and fpv camera, and 1 channel for a release mechanism. I may have missed one :)

Thanks for your input.
Wow sounds impressive to me...then yes, I think 2 X8R's daisy chain should give you the 16 conventional outputs for plugging in all of that as one way to do it, not using SBUS. You are out of my league but wonder if the Naza V2 would use SBUS. I too, have been considering moving up to a 550 at some point. Hope to hear how you make out.
Regards
 
"Wow sounds impressive to me...then yes, I think 2 X8R's daisy chain should give you the 16 conventional outputs for plugging in all of that as one way to do it, not using SBUS. You are out of my league but wonder if the Naza V2 would use SBUS. I too, have been considering moving up to a 550 at some point. Hope to hear how you make out.
Regards"

It appears that it is pretty simple to use SBUS with the Naza as shown here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kl5wuMiZ1_w. I like simple! I hope I am not missing anything. Thanks again.
 
jimandsue60 said:
.....I am planning on using this on a 450 or 550 with Naza V2. Right now I am using a 9 channel Hitec Aurora 9 and need more channels, this radio does not do S-bus. I need 4 channels for basic controls (aileron/elevator/yaw and throttle), 2 channels for IOC and gps/atti/manual, 1 channel for failsafe, 3 channels to control pitch/roll and mode selection on my 3 axis gimbal, 1 channel for lights, 1 channel for a video selection between go pro and fpv camera, and 1 channel for a release mechanism. I may have missed one :)

Thanks for your input.

You do not need a dedicated channel for failsafe - you can simply do this with a P-Mix on your GPS/Atti/Manual channel.
 
The Editor said:
jimandsue60 said:
.....I am planning on using this on a 450 or 550 with Naza V2. Right now I am using a 9 channel Hitec Aurora 9 and need more channels, this radio does not do S-bus. I need 4 channels for basic controls (aileron/elevator/yaw and throttle), 2 channels for IOC and gps/atti/manual, 1 channel for failsafe, 3 channels to control pitch/roll and mode selection on my 3 axis gimbal, 1 channel for lights, 1 channel for a video selection between go pro and fpv camera, and 1 channel for a release mechanism. I may have missed one :)

Thanks for your input.

You do not need a dedicated channel for failsafe - you can simply do this with a P-Mix on your GPS/Atti/Manual channel.

So, I would keep gps/atti/manual on the 3 position switch and create a pmix on another switch? Thanks
 
I have a couple more questions, Do I need a module to get telemetry from the aircraft like gps info/altitude? If so which one is recommended ? Is there a way to get battery pack voltage displayed on the tx?
 
For those of you using the Taranis with the Naza V2 and Naza Lite I can highly recommend investing in the Zaggometry cable. This allows you to take the GPS and power data from the Naza and send it back to the Taranis via the Telemetry stream. I have mine setup to display:

Distance from pilot.
Altitude.
Ground Speed.
Vertical Speed.
Current Drawn
Instantanious Current Draw.
Battery and individual Cell Voltages.
GPS Location
Gimbal position.

And if you enable logging it records all the info onto the internal SD card which can then be exported into Google Earth for post flight analysis.

I have used other makes of radio but the Taranis exceeds all in features and value for money.

Regards

Nidge
 

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Nidge said:
For those of you using the Taranis with the Naza V2 and Naza Lite I can highly recommend investing in the Zaggometry cable. This allows you to take the GPS and power data from the Naza and send it back to the Taranis via the Telemetry stream. I have mine setup to display:

Distance from pilot.
Altitude.
Ground Speed.
Vertical Speed.
Current Drawn
Instantanious Current Draw.
Battery and individual Cell Voltages.
GPS Location
Gimbal position.

And if you enable logging it records all the info onto the internal SD card which can then be exported into Google Earth for post flight analysis.

I have used other makes of radio but the Taranis exceeds all in features and value for money.

Regards

Nidge
Wow, thanks Nidge for this info...I am looking into that cable now. I have used the logging feature to review the RSSI after a days flight. But have been wondering how I could get the iosd telemetry data to the log also and this looks like a great solution.

One question, were you able to create/add that additional screen display of telemetry info on the Taranis using an add-on LUA program, or by some other means?
 
What is the comparison of price between both radios with the same number of channels, from 9 up? What is the maximum number of channels that your's has available?
 
Nidge said:
For those of you using the Taranis with the Naza V2 and Naza Lite I can highly recommend investing in the Zaggometry cable. This allows you to take the GPS and power data from the Naza and send it back to the Taranis via the Telemetry stream. I have mine setup to display:

Distance from pilot.
Altitude.
Ground Speed.
Vertical Speed.
Current Drawn
Instantanious Current Draw.
Battery and individual Cell Voltages.
GPS Location
Gimbal position.

And if you enable logging it records all the info onto the internal SD card which can then be exported into Google Earth for post flight analysis.

I have used other makes of radio but the Taranis exceeds all in features and value for money.

Regards

Nidge

Thanks for that information. How does it display different models? Are the sticks any taller than Futaba? And, if this thread convinces me, where is the lowest cost dealer?!
 
Nidge said:
For those of you using the Taranis with the Naza V2 and Naza Lite I can highly recommend investing in the Zaggometry cable. This allows you to take the GPS and power data from the Naza and send it back to the Taranis via the Telemetry stream. I have mine setup to display:

Distance from pilot.
Altitude.
Ground Speed.
Vertical Speed.
Current Drawn
Instantanious Current Draw.
Battery and individual Cell Voltages.
GPS Location
Gimbal position.

And if you enable logging it records all the info onto the internal SD card which can then be exported into Google Earth for post flight analysis.

I have used other makes of radio but the Taranis exceeds all in features and value for money.

Regards

Nidge

Good information and welcome to the forum!
 
Khudson7 said:
Wow, thanks Nidge for this info...I am looking into that cable now. I have used the logging feature to review the RSSI after a days flight. But have been wondering how I could get the iosd telemetry data to the log also and this looks like a great solution.

One question, were you able to create/add that additional screen display of telemetry info on the Taranis using an add-on LUA program, or by some other means?

I can't take credit for the telemetry screen. This was coded using Luo by Richard Oude Eberink in the Taranis Facebook group. I only modified slightly to my F550 setup. Using the companion software you just drop and drag the scripts into the appropriate model memory.

The cable does not convey the current (Amps) information I just daisy chained the FrSky 40Amp current sensor into the mix.

@PhantomFanatic:

The sticks are adjustable in height. Each model is assigned a memory location and selected from a list. There is also an extensive library of model images including many popular fixed wings, heli's, and multirotors, already loaded into the transmitter so you can really personalise the model memory. If there isn't one for your specific model it's very easy to add your own 8 bit bmp image.

Some have commented on the range. BoltRC did a test using the standard transmitter and X8r receiver and achieved a range of over 10km. For my purposes I have flown to the limits of my unaided eyes and the RSSI has still been up in the high 70's.

The other thing to consider is that as well as the transmitter being extremely good value for money the receivers are also very economically priced as are the telemetry modules. Spares are also cheap and readily available.

Regards

Nidge
 
Nidge said:
For those of you using the Taranis with the Naza V2 and Naza Lite I can highly recommend investing in the Zaggometry cable. This allows you to take the GPS and power data from the Naza and send it back to the Taranis via the Telemetry stream. I have mine setup to display:

Distance from pilot.
Altitude.
Ground Speed.
Vertical Speed.
Current Drawn
Instantanious Current Draw.
Battery and individual Cell Voltages.
GPS Location
Gimbal position.

And if you enable logging it records all the info onto the internal SD card which can then be exported into Google Earth for post flight analysis.

I have used other makes of radio but the Taranis exceeds all in features and value for money.

Regards

Nidge

I searched but could not find the USD price and where to purchase this?
 
PhantomFanatic said:
What is the comparison of price between both radios with the same number of channels, from 9 up? What is the maximum number of channels that your's has available?
The Taranis is approx $200 give or take
There are several Futabas but it appears to me that the ones most are using here, range from about $350(10J), up to about $600(14SG)

Taranis has 16 channels when matched to a 16 channel receiver like the Frisky X8R(SBUS)...

BUT if you want the radio with the most channels, (if channels are your thing) there is a Futaba (18MZ) 18 channel for only about $3000 U.S. :oops:
 

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