Computer Controlling a Syma Helicopter

Recently, I've been playing with these inexpensive Syma Remote Control Helicopters. At the time they were only $20 (but seemed have been price adjusted for the holidays). They're quite robust to crashes and pretty easy to fly. For $20, they're a blast. The other interesting thing about these copters is that the controller transmits commands using simple infrared LEDs rather than a proper radio. This simplicity makes it tauntingly appealing to try reverse engineering. So tonight, I decided to do a little procrastineering and see if I could get my helicopter to become computer controlled.

For hardware, I've been liking these Teensy USB boards because they are cheap, small, versatile, and have a push-button boot loader that makes iteration very quick. They can be easily configured to appear as a USB serial port and respond to commands. For the IR protocol, I started with this web page which got the helicopter responding. But, the behavior I was getting was very stuttery and would not be sufficient for reliable autonomous control. So, I decided to take a closer look with an oscilloscope to get accurate timing from the stock remote control. Some of my measured numbers were fairly different for the web tutorial I found. But, now the control is fairly solid. So, here is the nitty gritty:

IR Protocol:

- IR signal is modulated at 38KHz.
- Packet header is 2ms on then 2ms off
- Packet payload is 4 bytes in big-endian order:
1. yaw (0-127) default 63
2. pitch (0-127) default 63
3. throttle (0-127 for channel A, 128-255 for channel B) default 0
4. yaw correction (0-127) default 63
- Packet ends with a stop '1' bit

Format of a '1' is 320us on then 680us off (1000us total)
Format of a '0' is 320us on then 280us off (600us total)

Packets are sent from the stock controller every 120ms. You can try to send commands faster, but the helicopter may start to stutter as it misses messages.

Download Teensy AVR Code (updated 11/30/2011)

The code is available at the above link. It's expecting 5 byte packets over the serial port at 9600 baud. The first byte of each packet must be 255, followed by yaw, pitch, throttle, and yaw correction (each ranging from 0-127). It will return a 'k' if 5 bytes are properly read. If it doesn't receive any serial data for 300ms, it will stop transmitting the IR signal.

Unfortunately, I can't help you write a program to communicate over serial since that will depend on your OS (Windows, Mac, Linux) and varies by language as well. But, it is fairly easy with lots of web tutorials. The harder challenge will be figuring out how to update the 3 analog values to keep it from crashing. =o) The most likely candidate is to use a camera (probably with IR markers) to monitor the position of the helicopter. But, getting that to work well is definitely a project unto itself.

Good Luck!