Hey guys, I’ve been making these remotes based on the Firefly/Feather remote project developed on the forums and having a lot of fun with them. When made well they perform quite nicely. I’m doing a batch of completes that I’ll be starting to build and ship after the new year. I’m also going to sell the enclosures with the epoxy embedded OLEDs for anybody that would like to build their own and save a little coin. The basics for making the electronics are included at the end of this post.
Adafruit conviently makes a proto-board for the Feather M0 platform with the same small footprint. This helps the DIYer circumvent PCBs. I adapted the Feather smart remote schematic over to the protoboard to help with my prototyping and to make the project more accessible. With a few changes to the proto-shield that I made for the Adafruit feather M0 RF packet radio, it could also be used with the Adafruit Feather M0 LoRa, and you would be on your way to making a Firefly nano remote. Both the Feather and Nano could work with this enclosure.
This remote uses good old 2.4 Ghz RF through the servo. Which is what we’ve all been using since the beginning, and until people more talented than myself come up with a better protocol, I’m going to stick with this. All of the telemetry data goes through the COMM/UART port.
I also like the estop feature added by @StefanMe. It comes in handy if you drop your remote, or if some kind of electronic hiccup in your rig causes a brief disconnect. You just roll to a stop. Additionally, if for some reason your remote or even your rig isn’t working properly the e-stop feature makes is very difficult to ride. It triggers every few yards. Safety first.
Another perk to this remote is that you can supposedly pair it with up to 20 boards making it such that you only need one fancy-pants remote for your entire quiver. I’ve paired it with three… still aspiring for twenty 
. Below, I have added a BOM and tutorial for making multiples of the receiver. It will work with any Feather smart remote. If you have a Feather remote that I did not make and you are having trouble with it, try making the external antenna on the transmitter longer. This made a big difference in my tests. The EU/AU board needs twice the length as the US board.
In this build of the Feather remote I did the basic engineering to use a 5V thumbwheel made for applications like aviation and heavy machinery. It required a small 5V booster and a 10/20k circuit divider. If you make your own remote electronics, you can configure the thumbstick at ruffycontrols.com to have a plastic or elastomer actuator. You can also choose from two different force levels. I prefer the lower force level because I have week thumbs 
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Using a thumbstick like this one makes it such that you no longer need a 3D printer for the project, and it’s also a far superior thumbstick. I’m not dissing the original project here. Learning to make your own hall-sensored actuator is very practical, but when the rubber meets the road, I’d rather have one made by the pros. This one has a three-million use, repeatability rating, and an impact resistance/waterproof rating of IP 67. That’s awesome. It also happens to be very comfortable and @ixf has commented that is easy to manipulate through thick gloves. Below is a picture of the thumbwheel mechanism of the original feather next to Ruffy Controls with the 5v booster. I don’t know exactly what I’m trying to show here, but I like the pic. The 3D printed thumbwheel with spring is obviously missing, but I think that you’ll get the point. Just pretend that it’s there.
The enclosure is CNC milled from bamboo. I used double-sided tooling to make a textured grip that helps channel greeze (grease + sleeze) away from your hands. The grooves along with the natural finish help your hands breath on long rides.
As far as the shape is concerned, some people like pistol-gripped remotes, others like pucks, but I personally prefer McDonald’s chicken nugget-shaped remotes. They remind me of my childhood. The remote enclosure is finished with Pure tung oil and citrus solvent. This is how fine gun-grips are finished. It feels natural and smells nice. I’ve tried using acrylics and laquers, but they make it the finish feel like plastic. Additionally, they smell terrible unless your a huffer 
These are bamboo, but I’d like to do runs with exotic hardwoods in the future. If you have a CNC machine and would like files for the toolpaths and such, I’d be happy to share them, so long as my post processor can generate files for your machine. Also, I should mention that you don’t need a CNC to make a nice enclosure. I used a jigsaw, a drill and some sand paper to make my first few batches.
In addition to the milled bamboo, I increased the screen size used from 0.96" to 1.3" and put one on both sides of the remote for ambidextrous use… and to be superfluous 
At some point I would like to make it such that the screens could display different data, but I think that I would have to use a different micro-controller board to pull that off. The screens are both embedded under 1/16" of epoxy. This protects them extra-ordinarily well and creates a lens which drastically improves visibility, especially in broad daylight.
These remotes have tested well with @Ricco’s Usplit and ttl system. Him and @Ace figured out how to make the trigger button sound a horn. I love it. I use this remote and my Metr pro with the Usplit. It works seamlessly.
I’m selling the enclosures with epoxy embedded OLEDs for $69. The additional components to build your own costs about $150 to procure. I’m selling complete remotes for $299. I know that price might seem insulting and hilarious, but quite honestly, I don’t prefer to do full remote builds that aren’t for my complete boards, and that is reflected in the price. Regardless, I’m happy to help people make their own if they don’t have the skrilla for a complete remote. Don’t hesitate to bother me about it.
A few of the remotes are spoken for. They aren’t up on my website yet. Message me if you’d like a full build or an enclosure.
Anyhow, I hope you all are somewhere warm, or that your board works well in the snow Happy Riding!!
Oh, one last thing, if you are innovating some DIY remote electronics of your own and would like help with a nice CNC milled enclosure, send me a foot-print, and I’ll see what I can come up with.
Transmitter electronics:
- Adafruit Feather M0 board (part# 3176)
- Adafruit Featherwing Proto-board for Feather M0 (part# 2884)
- Adafruit 5V booster for the thumbwheel (part# 3661)
- UFL adaptor with external antenna and SMD connector.
- Two Monochrome 128x64 SSD 1306 OLED screens. These can be found all over Amazon. Buy the ones with 4-pins.
- Two JST XH 2.54mm 4-pin housings with connectors and wire leads.
- Any 3.7 v lipo battery will work. I use a 500 mAh that fits the footprint of the micro-controller board perfectly. If you don’t buy a lipo from Adafruit you have to reverse the polarity, or something will smell like burning. I remove the jack and solder the battery leads directly to the board. It saves space. The black wire goes toward the USB jack.
- The tactile buttons are standard issue and can be found on Amazon.
- I used a latching pushbutton and installed it on the back of the remote. It’s a lot nicer than the slide-switches that I tend to see used. This can also be found on Amazon.
- If you’d like to make a vibrating remote you need a 1k resistor, a 2N2222 transitor and a tiny disc vibrator. Again, these things are all on Amazon. Generally you can only buy them in bulk.
- To make the voltage-divider circuit to bring the 5V signal back down from the thumbwheel you need a 10k and 20k resister. You may as well buy a kit with all the above listed resisters on Amazon.
- Even though the Feather M0 comes with a micro-usb port, I add a micro-USB port that extends to the exterior of the enclosure with a neoprene gasket. It helps seal things up and makes it easier to access the charging port. This is not set up as a data port. Programming needs to be done through the micro-usb jack on the micro-controller board.
- Lastly, check out Ruffycontrols.com for the thumbwheel. I use the single-hall MSA series here. You can make some selections for the actuator, such as an elastomer or a plastic thumbpad. They have two different force level springs. I like the 70N spring. The 140N spring gave me “thumb fatigue” over long rides. If you do short/fast races the 140N spring might be just what you need. I think it has better speed and breaking micro-control. Lastly, choose the 5V model.
That all might leave a lot of questions, and I am happy to answer them. The black tape in the middle is covering the 5v booster for the throttle. I’m building a few before Christmas and will take more detailed photos if anyone is interested.
Receiver Electronics:
- Adafruit Feather M0 RF packet radio (part# 3176)
- Adafruit Featherwing Proto-board for Feather M0 (part# 2884)
- 220 uF 16v capacitor
- 22 uF 16v capacitor
- Whatever type of 3-pin connector will work with your esc’s servo port. Usually JST PH 2.0mm (VESC) or JST XH 2.54mm (Unity).
- Whatever type of 2-pin connector will connect to your COMM port. Usually JST PH 2.0. You could use a connecter with 7-8 pins, but that takes up the rest of the COMM port. You might want the 5v, 3.3v and GND for running another electronic device. I just use a 2-pin going into TX and RX.
- UFL adaptor with external antenna and SMD connecter.
- Optional- L/C power supply
These pictures show the completed shields but would still need to be stacked onto the micro-controller board by way of headers and then soldered.
The OLEDs are pretty efficient and the remote has a sleep mode that kicks in after a time period that you can specify in the settings just in case you forget to turn it off. I also doubled the battery size in the 2.0 model.
