Turning an Old Phone’s Motherboard into an RC Plane Controller

Upcycling smartphones makes a lot of sense, especially since they contain so many components that remain useful long after their desirability as a smartphone has faded. In the case of [Mountain DS Lab], they opted to use an 8-year old Xiaomi Mi 8 phone to add long-range FPV video link and remote control functionality to an RC plane, using the phone’s LTE cellular connectivity. The smartphone was bought used for $23, with the default Xiaomi ROM overwritten by LineageOS to get a more lightweight a