Feb 2021

Feather Paramotor Winch LoRa Remote

Designed and built a paramotor winch remote control based on a Adafruit Feather M0 + LoRa microcontroller with LoRa radio. A paramotor operator uses a hand remote with variable trigger input to control remotely the winch that the operator is tethered to. This video demonstrates the concept (the video is not for this device / product, and shows a parasail, not paramotor).

The sender or 'Tx unit' is a hand control that tells the remote winch how quickly the operator desires the winch to retract the tether, causing the operator to rise in the air. The hand control takes rotational input from a pinky and ring finger squeeze on a trigger. The trigger has two magnets mounted in it, and they act upon a hall effect sensor. The hall effect sensor output is read by the microcontroller (analog input), and then the value as millivolts is transmitted via LoRa as an integer (0 to 3300) to the receiver ('Rx unit').

The 'Rx unit' consists of a microcontroller with a LoRa radio built in. The received message from the 'Tx unit' is decoded into an integer, scaled to a range appropriate for the winch controller, and output as a voltage to the winch controller. A switch on the 'Rx' unit' allows the operator to bypass the signal from the 'Rx unit' and use input from a potentiometer mounted on the enclosure instead. A OLED display shows the analog output in millivolts, and it also indicates if the source signal is from the 'Tx unit', or the potentiometer. An LED provides an indication of LoRa communication between the 'Tx unit' and the 'Rx unit'.

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