Turnigy 9XR Review and Teardown


I don't have one yet, but I do have the closest thing, and I have plenty to say about the 9XR.


Get it here:



Updates, corrections and other news.

Minor mistakes are corrected in the video with annotations.


9XR Internals revealed, big thanks to Bob Alexander.


If you are up to it discussion on these images is on the fast growing 9XR thread. 

Here is what I think:

What a bunch of morons, they redesigned the board, but did not bother to free up the two serial lines. Why go to all that effort and not bother to make it compatible with the telemetry capable units like FrSky. 

They also bodged the connections to the ISP. Wires are directly soldered to the PCB and pads. OK fine for a hack but production you have to be kidding.

The source is out.

Well it was always out if you knew where to look. HK have provided a link to the source code on their website. It still has references to firmware that probably will not work without hacks. Perhaps a source code review is in order. It is er9x btw.

Manual version 2!

HK have updated the manual, well, deleted the references to JETI telemetry anyway. It is still shit.


ER9X slates HobbyKing.

The er9x developers have sand up there fanny saying that HK has violated the terms of the software licence. 

Quote: 
IMPORTANT NOTICE - TURNIGY 9XR 
Hobbyking/Turnigy ave just released a radio called 9XR which has a port for a programmer and an installed backlight. This is a very welcome addition since it makes programming the radio very easy for the novice. That being said, they have not given credit to the originators and contributors and they have not released the code as required by the GNU 2.0 software license. 
So while we are very happy to see them make the 9XR radio we do want them to acknowledge the hard work and the effort made by all the contributors. Please let them know how you feel about this. 
We have tried to contact them but have not been able to receive any response. We'll update here if and when we get one.

Hang on a sec, give HK a break. At this time the things are still in the mail. And as per the GPL2 they only have to provide access to the source code to people who buy the product. As you can see they have done more than that, they have released it to everybody. Now I could be wrong here but that is my understanding from the software licence.

Even so, the developers have not really been mentioned properly. So head over to the er9x page and donate. A lot of work has gone into it.


Bruce not happy with 9XR ergonomics.

Another reason not to get one. The ergonomics are pretty poor according to Bruce.