A free, open-source radio control system you can build yourself
LockDownRadioControl is free software, and always will be.
Every part of LockDownRadioControl is free: the transmitter, the receiver, the phone apps and the web pages. You may use it, study it, change it and pass it on. If you share a changed version, share its source too, under the same licence.
This is not a commercial product and never will be. It exists so that other flyers can build one.
github.com/Mmessiter/LockDownRadioControl
| What | Licence | In plain English |
|---|---|---|
| Version 2 software: receiver (and its web pages), transmitter screen, apps, tools | GPL-3.0-or-later, with an app-store exception | Use, copy, change and share it. Share your changes under the same licence. |
| The transmitter's main-board (Teensy) software | GPL-2.0-or-later | The same freedoms. It links a radio driver that is GPL-2.0 only. |
| Everything in the Version 1 repository | GPL-2.0-or-later | The same freedoms. |
| Version 2 circuit boards | CERN-OHL-S-2.0 | The hardware equivalent of the GPL: build and sell boards, but published changes stay open. |
| Version 2 manuals, help texts, the screen's pages and sounds, pictures, case files | CC BY-SA 4.0 | Share and adapt; credit the author; same licence for adaptations. |
The details are in LICENSING.md (Version 2) and LICENSING.md (Version 1).
Apple's and Google's terms clash with the plain GPL. (That is why VLC was removed from the App Store in 2011.) So this project adds an app-store exception under section 7 of the GPL. It is granted to everybody, not only to me: your own fork may go on an app store too.
Its one condition is the point of the whole thing: publish the source of whatever version you ship, free of charge, somewhere anyone can reach without an app-store account.
The exception is LICENSE-EXCEPTION.txt in the repository.
Designed and built by Malcolm Messiter, with Claude (Anthropic's AI) as pair programmer. The firmware, the apps, the pages and the tests were written together over 2025 and 2026. The copyright line names one human only because the law does not let an AI hold copyright; the credit is shared. Please keep it in derivatives.