Cube Orange/ADSB-CB/Ardupilot: RCIN as UART

Hello

I just have a question, because I am running out of UART ports.
SERIAL5 is already used for ADSB receiver, so not really many UARTS on that board.
I’m a bit spoiled by MATEK controllers, because they have an incredible number of ports …

Is it possible to use RCIN as

  • UART for ESC telemetry?
  • to connect Frsky F.Port receiver?

Or is there any other port which can be reused like SBusOut or SPKT?
Or add some USB-TTL converter to USB-Port PINs?
Or use some servo port as soft-serial? Other controllers support that with alternate board configurations…

I know that it is possible to use CAN-UART converters, but I want to avoid that if it is possible…

Thanks a lot!

Greetings

Nicolas

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I’ll add myself to your question.

Telem1 is being used for telemetry, Telem2 is being used to talk to a Raspberry Pi; GPS1, and GPS2 are both in use for moving baseline GPS, CON is no longer available, and I2C2 is in use for airspeed. But I need another serial port or I2C port for a laser rangefinder. Any thoughts on the most efficient way to accommodate the last of these?

Most Lidar works fine on I2C , just use a dedicated power source

Right, but the I2C port on the Cube carrier board is taken by the airspeed sensor.

Wouldn’t I2C splitter be the best option?

Dumb question: can I2C multiplex? If so, I didn’t know that.

You can use just some i2c splitter. The number of devices is not important, just the overall data rate. But you can also decrease the read frequency of the lidar bit and it should be absolutely fine.

And you can also move one or both GPS to CAN BUS (which also uses same multiplexer as i2c).

Matek has also a CAN BUS GPS module with an additional i2c Port for the airspeed sensor. That would also makes sense to simplify cable management (e.g. No additional wires when GPS and airspeed sensor is in the same wing).

http://www.mateksys.com/?portfolio=m8q-can

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I2C can multiplex, but you may wish to verify the device addresses first. Each I2C device is (at the factory) assigned a 7-bit address, and if they overlap you’ll have a bad time. Addresses can usually be found in the product datasheets and the chances are fairly low, but I’ve had it happen before.

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I2C is a BUS - just like CAN and SPI - hence each devices can communicate providing they have different adresses. Some devices have fixed address , some are hardware preset (jumper or solder bridges) and many are software configurable.

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