matrix filter

EmuFlight and INAV Matrix Filter

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Matrix Filter will have its premiere together with EmuFlight 0.3.0 and INAV 2.5. Which of those two will happen first is still unknown. After originally developing Matrix Filter for INAV, I also ported it to EmuFlight code and already some time ago they accepted my code proposal and merged it.

You have to admit, that the name is quite catchy. Matrix Filter for sure sounds very sci-fi. It’s not that sci-fi tho. It’s just an evolution of dynamic gyro notch filters known from Betaflight for quite some time. Instead of having a one-dimensional filter structure, it is a 3×3 filter matrix that works like this: Read More

A brief history of a flight controller – From MultiWii to Betaflight and beyond

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I will tell you the history of probably the most successful family of Open Source flight controllers: MultiWii that continues its life today as Betaflight, EmuFlight, and INAV. Other families like OpenPilot were not that successful and practically died. On the other hand, the history of ArduPilot is not that interesting and we can leave it for the other time.

Wii and Arduino make MultiWii

Believe it or not, but it all began with a Nintendo Wii controller: Nunchuck. Why? It was the most obvious source of gyros in the early days. You pry open one Nintendo Nunchuck, get gyro out, connect it to Arduino, flash it with MultiWii and you have made you your very own DIY flight controller. Yeap, the “Wii” in MultiWii was taken from the Nintendo Wii itself. If DIY was not your thing, you always had the option of buying ready boards like KK for example. Read More

INAV on rovers, boats, crawlers, tanks and other ground vehicles

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What can INAV do? Well…. it can fly your multirotor drone and a fixed-wing airplane. And it can do it pretty nicely! Unfortunately, that is all it can do. Now, at least.

Every year or so, I’m building an RC airboat and always wanted to build a rover based on some kind of an RC crawler. Running those things without any flight controller is more than fine, but I always wanted to have at least RTH capability. You know, when something happens a few hundred meters into the lake and you really do not want to swim there to recover the boat. And no, you really do not want to do it. Read More

Was I disqualified from Betaflight?

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The best way to fight with haters and different types of fanboys with whom you do not agree with is to ignore then. Just like that: do not feed the trolls, it makes no sense. Sometimes, tho, it’s so hilartious… Like today I learned that I was disqualified from… Yes, from what? Betaflight? Some other privilege I’m not aware of?

And this is called a disqualification... from Betaflight?

Oh, one day I will find the best screenshots from late Butterflight Slack… oh boy, that was interesting read 🙂

FrSky ACCST 2.0.0 “important” firmware update for all receivers, radios and transmitters

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FrSky does not sleep, or rather woke up, and after years of not touching the topic, released an “important” update of ACCST 2.4GHz protocol for all the compatible 2.4GHz receivers, transmitter modules, and radios: X9D Taranis, Q X7 Taranis, X10/X10S Horus, X8R, X4R, X4R-SB, XM, R-XSR, XJT and so on.

What changed in ACCST 2.0.0? According to FrSky, they fixed some kind of a bug with uncontrolled servo movement in ceratin conditions (probably almost never) and improved “correction and verification”.

What does it mean in the real world:

  • ACCST 2 is not compatible with previous ACCST
  • if you decide to upgrade, you will have to upgrade receivers and transmitters. All!
  • any 3rd party ACCST compatible receivers and transmitters stop to work: including multiprotocol modules and 3rd party D16 receivers

Consumer advise? Do not update! There is no need to update from ACCST to ACCST 2.0.0. Looks like there is no gain for end users at all and the cost is substantial!

frsky r-xsr pinout

FrSky R-XSR pinout

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FrSky R-XSR Pinout

  • GND – ground wire
  • +3,5-10V – positive voltage supply. R-XSR is rated up to 10V and powering it from 5V is the best option
  • SmartPort – inverted S.Port pin (standard) – can be used directly with STM32F3 and F7 series
  • SBUS – SBUS protocol output
  • SBUS Input – for redundancy function only
  • Uninverted SmartPort – uninverted S.Port pin (standard is inverted) – can be used directly all flight controllers on any serial port
  • Uninverted SBUS – uninverted SBUS protocol output (standard is inverted)

NEJELaser Master Driver and Software

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NEJE Master aka NEJELaser Master aka KKmoon Laser Engraver is a family of cheap laser engravers/cutters. They come in a variety of laser powers, from 3500mW, by 7000mW up to 20W. Bear in mind, this is the electrical input power, not real optical output power. The 20W module has a real power of around 5.5W optical. Still, it's enough to cut through 3mm plywood in 2 or 3 passes.

Anyhow… NEJE made it extremely hard to download their software. The web server where they store (http://wiki.nejetool.com/doku.php?id=nejelaser_master) it is extremely slow! The transfer is well below 3kB/s and breaks very often. This is why I've prepared a small package. It contains Windows driver for NEJE Laser Master and version 4.7 of NEJE software. You are welcome!

Download NEJE 4.7 and NEJE windows driver here

INAV and DJI HD FPV system – there is a light at the end of the tunnel

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When DJI did not decide to add INAV and Ardupilot to the list of the supported flight controller for the HD FPV system, some people were, at least, disappointed. Long story short: DJI OSD works only with Betaflight. Period.

DJI HD FPV system

Until today, DJI avoids the answer to the question if INAV and Ardupilot will be supported. I know there are some talks and there is a chance for native support for INAV and Ardupilot, but the timeline is not revealed.

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