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Betaflight not seeing transmitter input at all.

graywoulf

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Hi guys, I bought a pre owned Eachine Wizard X220 which had never been flown and I ordered a FRsky R-SXR receiver for it. I have watched all of the setup videos for the R-SXR including the firmware flashing instructions which I followed to the letter but I could not complete the flashing so I gave up on that. I decided to install the receiver in the quad which has the SP Racing F3 FC installed already. I even looked up all of the instructions on it as well and connected the R-SXR to the UART 3 on the FC using the power and the SBUS connecting wire to the RX connection on the FC. I have my QX7 set up with all of the necessary switches but when I connect the quad to Betaflight, I don't see any receiver connection bars in the receiver tab. I finally got the AUX 1 bar for arming to be visible but there is no response to the switch and no other bars showing at all. I am at the end of my rope on this one and I need some help please. Thanks in advance for any assistance on this nightmare.
 
The first wizard I bought gave me similar grief. Turned out it was running cleanflight and I had to flash the latest FC version for it to talk to Betaflight. Maybe since you have your target (SP Racing F3); try that. For some reason I seem to remember that i had to plug the battery in also (props off) for it talk to Betaflight.
 
Absolutely. The green light as well as the blue light are steady and I can go into the transmitter settings and see the RSSI strength as well.
OK, was a shot in the dark. From my little experience that is a configuration issue. Maybe @tevek has something there.
 
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The first wizard I bought gave me similar grief. Turned out it was running cleanflight and I had to flash the latest FC version for it to talk to Betaflight. Maybe since you have your target (SP Racing F3); try that. For some reason I seem to remember that i had to plug the battery in also (props off) for it talk to Betaflight.

I do now remember seeing something about that. Now, I have to figure out how to do that. I have never flashed a quad like that before. I did try connecting the battery but that didn't help. I will look up how to flash it. Thanks for the suggestion. ?
 
Since this quad has never been flown, did you move the connector off the front connector of the FC (IO_1 for PWM) and move it to the back connector (IO_2 for Serial), I have 3 X220 and was my first quads so I have a bit of experience with the SPRacing F3 in them, let me know if I can help.
 
The first wizard I bought gave me similar grief. Turned out it was running cleanflight and I had to flash the latest FC version for it to talk to Betaflight. Maybe since you have your target (SP Racing F3); try that. For some reason I seem to remember that i had to plug the battery in also (props off) for it talk to Betaflight.

Thanks again for bringing the BF flashing to my attention. It took trying many ways of getting the flashing done and thanks also to Bardwell's video on the x220 flashing the F3 board as he brought up the fact that I needed to try different settings in BF to get the flashing to actually happen. I now have the FC flashed to BF instead of CF. I applied Bardwell's old PID's just for starters and have tweaked them a bit but not quite what I would call final settings. I am working on my rates right now and hopefully I will be flying the x220 later today.
 
Since this quad has never been flown, did you move the connector off the front connector of the FC (IO_1 for PWM) and move it to the back connector (IO_2 for Serial), I have 3 X220 and was my first quads so I have a bit of experience with the SPRacing F3 in them, let me know if I can help.

Since I am using the FRsky R-SXR receiver, I connected it directly to UART 3. I know that a lot of these use the larger receivers but I wanted to keep it as light and compact as I could. On another note, I have found out that the SP Racing F3 FC I have is a clone. The PDB by Matek is also a clone. At this point, I don't care as long as they work. I was not sure if I was going to be able to flash the F3 board but I was successful after all. This was a quad I bought for $50 and my first X220. I wanted one of these when they first came out so now I have one and I am looking forward to flying it. Thanks for your input on this and if you have any suggestions on PID's then I am listening.
 
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I personally like BF 3.5.7 with default PID's, with minor tweaking from there. Turns out that the BF developers know a lot about the code they have designed and the PID's are usually very good for almost all 5" builds.
 
Yes, plug the FC into BFC on the computer and when you connect you can look at the Log section or do a "diff" in CLI and look at the top. In this example below you can see it is a Fury F4 w/ OSD (FURYF4OSD BF firmware target) running 3.5.1

1591560157533.png

1591560228780.png
 
Thanks for the education. My BF screen looks a little different from yours but I typed in "diff" as you suggested and I got this report...

# Betaflight / SPRACINGF3 (SRF3) 4.0.0 Apr 11 2019 / 07:41:11 (9ad2cc844) MSP API: 1.41 / FEATURE CUT LEVEL 6

So, I guess that it is pretty much up to date.

But now I have a strange problem. I installed an external beeper to the FC board which was too simple to do and this morning after I had flashed the FC and got everything working, the beeper worked fine. Now it does not work at all no matter what I do. The switch is set up correctly in BF and shows that it is working fine... or should be. I tried checking the voltage on the board while I had the battery connected and I did not get any reading on that. I guess that either I am overlooking something or that part of the FC board just does not work any more. Any ideas on that?
 
Maybe try this:
Basically supplying Vcc to your F3 PDB to give you buzzer voltage.
 
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It is likely the BF4, the devs have removed 3.5.7 revs from the configurator (bad move on their part) but you can go here and download it and then use the "Load Firmware [Local] options.

 
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Thanks a lot guys for the help and the links. I just saw the vbat mod right after I put the quad back together. :rolleyes: So, tomorrow I will dot that mod as well. I just don't understand why the beeper worked at one point and quit. I will let you know how the next mod and firmware flashing goes when it is done. Thanks again for all the help. ?
 
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Thanks a lot guys for the help and the links. I just saw the vbat mod right after I put the quad back together. :rolleyes: So, tomorrow I will dot that mod as well. I just don't understand why the beeper worked at one point and quit. I will let you know how the next mod and firmware flashing goes when it is done. Thanks again for all the help. ?
Good luck, you’ll be fine. I just drove into town to grab a load of firewood, do the obligatory shopping and fly my DC5. Got to the oval all excited grabbed the quad backpack and realised I’d left the batteries at home.... And rain is on the way..
 
It is likely the BF4, the devs have removed 3.5.7 revs from the configurator (bad move on their part) but you can go here and download it and then use the "Load Firmware [Local] options.


I found the F3 hex file but I don't really know how to load it to the FC. HELP! :D Good news! The VBAT connection fixed the beeper. Yay!
 
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If BF 4 and up works good on your quad there is no need to go back to 3.5.7, but if you wanted to you would simply load the HEX file from your computer with this button and then flash.

1591645807758.png

And look for it to say loaded locally before flashing

1591645883913.png
 
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Thanks again for the continuing education. ? I think it is going to be OK as it is but I have that file downloaded just in case. I'm working on a FPV cam upgrade now since I had to take it all apart again. I'm going to fly this thing eventually. ;)
 

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