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NaviCore — Astromech Animation Controller. A WCB-based RC controller for ESP32‑S3 (WCB hardware v3.2). It reads SBUS from an FrSky receiver and dispatches matrix buttons, switches, and knobs to local & remote Pololu Maestros, WCB boards, HCR vocalizers, MP3 triggers, and WLED LED controllers — over a hardware serial bus and ESP‑NOW. A browser‑based config tool (Web Serial) handles all setup.
Formerly RC‑Controller / HyperCore.
🚀 New build? The Setup Guide is the full end‑to‑end walkthrough — flash → wire → transmitter → connect → calibrate → map → save → test. The four steps below are the short version.
- Flash the firmware to a WCB v3.2 board → Flashing the Firmware
- Wire it up — receiver SBUS in, Maestro / aux serial / SBUS passthrough out → Hardware and Wiring
- Load the transmitter model onto your FrSky radio → Transmitter Setup
- Open the config tool, connect (USB, via a WCB, or a shared cross-tab port), and map your controls → Connecting · Config Tool Guide
| Page | What's in it |
|---|---|
| Setup Guide | Start here — the full end‑to‑end walkthrough from bare board to configured droid |
| PCB Assembly and BOM | Board bring-up — bill of materials and assembly notes |
| Hardware and Wiring | Board, pin map, receiver/SBUS, Maestro bus, aux serial, power |
| Flashing the Firmware | In‑browser flasher, ESP Flasher Companion, Arduino IDE, CI builds, versioning |
| Transmitter Setup | X18 / X20 / Twin X‑Lite, channel map, loading the model file |
| Connecting | Connect the config tool — USB, via a WCB, or a shared cross-tab port |
| Config Tool Guide | The live monitor, buttons/switches/knobs, modes, multi‑tap, calibration, save/load |
| Action Editor and Command Library | The command-first action editor and the command library |
| Maestro Setup | Pololu Control Center, device numbers, local vs remote, wiring |
| Actions Reference | WCB, Maestro, HCR, MP3, WLED, Serial — every action type and its parameters |
| WLED and HCR Audio | WLED lighting actions + HCR audio fades and per-channel volume |
| Record and Replay | Record control sequences to clips and play them back |
| Cheat Sheet | Printable / interactive control reference; share it to a phone |
| Configuration Schema | The full config JSON shape — for export/backup/scripting |
| WCB Network | ESP‑NOW credentials, device IDs, remote Maestros, "Via WCB" |
| Remote Management over WCB | Manage the controller wirelessly through a tethered WCB |
| Serial JSON Protocol | Full USB command table for tooling / scripting |
| CLI Commands |
#Lxx serial debug commands |
| Failsafe and Signal Loss | What the droid does when the radio link drops |
| Glossary | WCB, SBUS, ESP‑NOW, ETM, HCR, Maestro, NVS… defined |
| Troubleshooting | No SBUS, port won't connect, save NACKs, HCR silent, Via‑WCB issues |
The transmitter multiplexes its physical buttons onto a single SBUS channel (the matrix channel, default CH7) as discrete PWM bands, and its switches/knobs onto their own channels. NaviCore decodes each SBUS frame, figures out which button was pressed (and how many times — single/double/triple tap), which mode the mode‑switch is in (1/2/3), and fires the actions you mapped to that button‑in‑that‑mode. Actions go out to a local Maestro on a hardware UART, to remote Maestros/WCBs over ESP‑NOW, to an HCR vocalizer, MP3 trigger, or WLED controller, or to a raw serial port — and you can record a sequence of actions to a clip and replay it on cue. The whole mapping lives in a single /config.json file on the board's LittleFS partition and is edited entirely from the browser config tool.
- Board: WCB v3.2 (Espressif ESP32‑S3)
- Input: SBUS (16 or 24 channel, auto‑detected)
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Firmware version scheme:
vMAJOR.MINOR.PATCH_<DTG>(e.g.v0.2.0_011009QJUN26) — see Flashing the Firmware
MIT. See the LICENSE file in the repository.