If you aspire to be an electronics enthusiast and wish to build your own drone, this PPM Encoder is ideal for you. Pulse Position Modulation (PPM) encoding is a system where encoding is achieved by positioning the pulses. The PPM encoder can encode up to 8 PWM (Pulse Width Modulated) signals into one PPM signal.
Certain flight controllers, like the Pixhawk autopilot, only support receivers compatible with PPM. If your receiver is PWM-based, you’ll require a PPM encoder like this one to interface with a PPM-only flight controller.
This PPM encoder converts standard PWM inputs into a single PPM output, allowing you to consolidate up to 8 channels from a standard RC receiver into a single wire PPM input for your flight controller, such as Pixhawk or APM. The advantage of PPM is that it consolidates all channels into one wire, aside from ground and power lines.
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Important Things to be Watch While Powering The Encoder:
The jumper JP1 has been included to provide some flexibility in the way you power the receiver, servos, and PPM Encoder. Often the power for the receiver, servos, and PPM Encoder will come from the autopilot board.
In this case, JP1 should be in place (shorted).
On another way, if the receiver or any servos are directly connected to the separate/additional power source and the autopilot’s +5V is also connected to the PPM Encoder via the PPM connector – Then You Must Remove jumper JP1. This will isolate the autopilot power supply from the separate receiver power supply. Failure to remove JP1 will likely damage the autopilot’s +5v switching regulator!
Note:
The firmware comes pre-configured to read 8 Channels. In case you would like to change the settings of the PPM encoder to invert the PPM signal and change the fail-safe pre-defined values you will need an AVR ISP programmer in order to reprogram it.
Features:
- Support the input channels: 8
- Output: PPM SUM × 1 / MUX × 1
- Dimensions: 28 x 19 x 5 mm
- Weight: 12 gm. (containing all the input and output wires)
Specification:
| Input Channel | 8 PWM channel |
|---|---|
| Output channel | 1 PPM channel |
| PWM signal cable length (mm) | 60 |
| PPM signal cable length (mm) | 90 |
| PPM Encoder dimensions | As per below |
| Length (mm) | 31.60 |
| Width (mm) | 23 |
| Height (mm) | 8 |
| Weight (gm) | 10 |
| Shipping Weight | 0.015 kg |
| Shipping Dimensions | 6 × 5 × 2 cm |
Package Includes:
1 x Pixhawk PPM Encoder Module.
1 x JR plug 10P input end of the cable.
1x JR plug 4P output end of the cable.
Alexey Mikhaylov (verified owner) –