How to use Yuneec remotes with other brand drones

cabinfourus · Oct 5, 2023

Hi guys,
I am back to my old Yuneec drones once again. I have slowly been moving away from Yuneec since they are not supporting any of the drones I purchased from them. I have a TON of Yuneec stuff, remotes, parts, cameras, gimbals, etc. I am trying to use some of the Yuneec equipment with other builds. One of the main things I love about Yuneec is the remote. I have several of the ST10 and ST24 controllers that I am trying to use with drones I designed and built. Before I removed the receivers from the actual drone I made sure they were bound so I would not have issues trying to bind them together. I have searched for info on this and found something interesting and wanted to share it with everyone.

Yuneec Radio Controls - Pixhawk Flight Controller Hardware Project

web.archive.org

It is an old archived site but still worth reading.

Vaklin · Oct 5, 2023

@h-elsner did some research and has a working project based on the Pi. Sources are available. Just check his posts in the forum.

h-elsner · Oct 5, 2023

I'm not sure about build a FW that uses SR24 for pixhawk. It should go anyhow. I have a Pixhawk Mini to test this. It's on the ToDo list for long winter nights.
PX4 autopilot has two files st24.h and st24.c in its software bundle to make it possible to use SR24 message format.
@dylanfm has made a converter SR24 to SBUS which allows to use the STxx remote controller to use with any SBUS compatible model.
Inspired by this I have tried a connection to Raspberry Pi to control whatever I want. The project is here:

GitHub - h-elsner/SR24_decode: Read and decode data from Yuneec ZigBee receiver SR24. Test tool for Raspberry Pi.

Read and decode data from Yuneec ZigBee receiver SR24. Test tool for Raspberry Pi. - h-elsner/SR24_decode

github.com

There is also a updated description of the SR24 message format, valid for ST16.

br HE

cabinfourus · Oct 5, 2023

h-elsner said:
I'm not sure about build a FW that uses SR24 for pixhawk. It should go anyhow. I have a Pixhawk Mini to test this. It's on the ToDo list for long winter nights.
PX4 autopilot has two files st24.h and st24.c in its software bundle to make it possible to use SR24 message format.
@dylanfm has made a converter SR24 to SBUS which allows to use the STxx remote controller to use with any SBUS compatible model.
Inspired by this I have tried a connection to Raspberry Pi to control whatever I want. The project is here:

GitHub - h-elsner/SR24_decode: Read and decode data from Yuneec ZigBee receiver SR24. Test tool for Raspberry Pi.

Read and decode data from Yuneec ZigBee receiver SR24. Test tool for Raspberry Pi. - h-elsner/SR24_decode

github.com

There is also a updated description of the SR24 message format, valid for ST16.

br HE

Sounds great! I will follow your project and let you know if I can contribute anything.
I want to find a way to use these Yuneec transmitters and receivers with the Pixhawk, a Naza M V2, or even an Adrucopter flight controller.

h-elsner · Oct 6, 2023

Pixhawk with PX4 Autopilot should be able to handle SR24 receiver. But I did not go too deep into it.
A working solution is @dylanfm SBUS converter and @Schteffl update for ESP8266.

br HE

h-elsner · Oct 6, 2023

I did a quick review of PX4 autopilot configuration. Here I found the parameter RC_INPUT_PROTO. The value for ST24 is 4.
With RC_PORT_CONFIG you can assign on which UART the SR24 is connected.

Again I must say I have not tested anything with that but it may a point to start with.

br HE

cabinfourus · Oct 6, 2023

h-elsner said:
I did a quick review of PX4 autopilot configuration. Here I found the parameter RC_INPUT_PROTO. The value for ST24 is 4.
With RC_PORT_CONFIG you can assign on which UART the SR24 is connected.

Again I must say I have not tested anything with that but it may a point to start with.

br HE

I am tied up with some other stuff right now but when I get some time I will see what I can figure out. Thanks for your input and work on this.

AKO · Apr 18, 2025

cabinfourus said:
Hi guys,
I am back to my old Yuneec drones once again. I have slowly been moving away from Yuneec since they are not supporting any of the drones I purchased from them. I have a TON of Yuneec stuff, remotes, parts, cameras, gimbals, etc. I am trying to use some of the Yuneec equipment with other builds. One of the main things I love about Yuneec is the remote. I have several of the ST10 and ST24 controllers that I am trying to use with drones I designed and built. Before I removed the receivers from the actual drone I made sure they were bound so I would not have issues trying to bind them together. I have searched for info on this and found something interesting and wanted to share it with everyone.

Yuneec Radio Controls - Pixhawk Flight Controller Hardware Project

web.archive.org

It is an old archived site but still worth reading.

Hey bro U don't Wana sell a camera for yuneec typhoon h do U

cabinfourus · Monday at 9:58 AM

AKO said:
Hey bro U don't Wana sell a camera for yuneec typhoon h do U

I am sorry, no. Are you looking for a CGO3 Plus?

korakora · Wednesday at 10:53 PM

unfortunately only RC no telemetry, still possible to get telemetry but need a middle device like ESP32 and create some script which we can copy on thunderbird firmware

h-elsner · 2025-04-24T04:01:04-0400

To get telemetry you can use telemetry port 1 or 2 on PX4 with a MAVlink bridge V2 on ESP8266:
MAV bridge FW from Kahuna project: GitHub - BeyondRobotix/Kahuna: ESP8266 WiFi Access Point and MAVLink Bridge
→ Download latest FW release: Releases · BeyondRobotix/Kahuna

I use QGroundControl but ArduPilot should also work.

Edit Link updated.

korakora · 2025-04-25T05:44:46-0400

h-elsner said:
To get telemetry you can use telemetry port 1 or 2 on PX4 with a MAVlink bridge V2 on ESP8266:
MAV bridge FW from Kahuna project: GitHub - BeyondRobotix/Kahuna: ESP8266 WiFi Access Point and MAVLink Bridge
→ Download latest FW release: Releases · BeyondRobotix/Kahuna

I use QGroundControl but ArduPilot should also work.

Edit Link updated.

i think i prefer this so the telemetry display on st16 are still useable

Post in thread 'St16 v1.'

Oct 14, 2021

Here is my implementation of transmitting telemetry data from the Thunderbird if this helps anyone:

C++:

//Alignment/padding
        #pragma pack(push, 1)
        typedef struct {
                uint8_t length;       ///< length includes type, data, and crc = sizeof(type)+sizeof(data[payload_len])+sizeof(crc8)
                uint8_t type;       ///< from enum ST24_PACKET_TYPE
                uint16_t t;     ///< packet counter or clock
                int32_t lat;      ///< latitude (degrees)  +/- 90 deg
                int32_t lon;      ///< longitude (degrees)  +/- 180 deg
                int32_t...

i was quick test with simple copy and paste this source to esp32 and yeah actually it works although not complete but it show voltage altitude flight mode and gps position are quite enough

my experiment like this
create 3 serials on esp32
1. connect to fc serial_1 (mavlink)
2. connect to fc serial_2 (RCIN)
3. connect to sr16

make passthrough between serial 2 & 3
and read every mavlink packet and send (f.e gps battery flight mode etc) encode those data with source above and injected to the serial 2 <edit Serial 3>