After dealing with ongoing connection issues with my Flipsky VX1, I finally got fed up and decided to build my own remote instead.
The goal was to whip up something cheap, simple, and using some parts I already had laying around. This is truly DIY, no custom PCBs, no ordering special boards. Just off the shelf cheap components and hand wiring.
I’ve been using it for the week and so far it hasn’t dropped out on me like the deathtrap VX1.
Now I’ll be testing it long term to make sure everything is OK and that this time I can acually trust my remote.
Yeah, I didn’t expect much from such a tiny board, but the stock signal was basically unusable. I found a few workarounds, and the antenna rotation ended up being a simple fix that made a huge difference.
ESP-NOW is perfect for this. Packets are constantly being sent and received, so even with brief interference the connection recovers quickly. My VX1 would fully drop out, and I had to power cycle the esk8 just for a chance to reconnect.
It’s far from perfect, but it does everything I need. It was fun to put together, components were cheap and most of them were already in my drawer!
I’m putting it all out there fully open source. Anyone’s free to use, modify, and build on it. Would be awesome if it helps someone, or if someone takes it even further
