=== Let's Drone Out — Episode 306 ===
Title: LDO Ep306 - Belrik & the Protocols
Recorded: 2021-07-08
Hosts: Stephen "Belrik" Howell, Andrew "Frank" Hyams, Wayne "CurryKitten" Andrews, Jack "Brightontillifly" Nash
Guest(s): (none recorded)
Total audience: 2,466
Platforms: YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mXwoRhK7ZnE); SoundCloud (http://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/feeds.soundcloud.com/stream/1084698172-letsdroneout-ldo-ep306-belrik-the-protocols.mp3)
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Belrik is https://youtube.com/user/ShinyVideoStuff

[23.41] Jack: Hello and welcome back to another wonderful episode of Let's Drone Out.
[58.06] Jack: Tonight we are joined by our Lord of Master Andrew-Frank.
[62.74] Jack: Good evening.
[63.74] Jack: My little Tony.
[65.74] Jack: Bonjour.
[66.74] Jack: Everyone's favourite curry kitten.
[69.7] Jack: Hello.
[70.94] Jack: The man with all the protocols, Stephen slash Bellrick.
[75.78] Jack: Hello.
[76.78] Jack: And I brighten till I fly.
[80.3] Jack: Hello.
[81.3] Jack: Welcome to the show.
[82.3] Jack: Frank, did you line this one up?
[84.78] Jack: Yeah, yeah.
[85.78] Frank: So we've all been regurgitating stuff that we've heard about various bits of radio protocols
[91.1] Frank: and technology and transmitters and things.
[94.74] Frank: And we don't know any about it ourselves because we haven't had our hands on the stuff.
[100.22] Frank: We've just been regurgitating what we've heard.
[103.98] Frank: But Bellrick on the LDO Discord, link in the description below, has had his hands on
[111.94] Frank: some of this technology and told us we're idiots and that he knows better.
[118.34] Frank: So we've got him on today to put us straight on some things that have been around.
[125.78] Curry: Calling us idiots is always hilarious.
[126.78] Curry: Always true of 90% of the population.
[127.78] Stephen: You guys aren't idiots at all.
[133.06] Stephen: But there are a couple of misconceptions that are thrown around.
[138.54] Stephen: One of those misconceptions is about crossfire shots because crossfire shot isn't really
[143.98] Stephen: a protocol, right?
[145.7] Stephen: Crossfire shot is a bug fix that allows the mixer to be in sync with your module.
[152.98] Stephen: So it's called crossfire shot due to a snappy bit of TBS marketing.
[157.3] Stephen: And hey, as well, I've got all the tracer kit, some of them behind me, you can see I've
[161.38] Stephen: lined up all the kind of low latency kit that I've set up.
[165.22] Stephen: So these quads are all the ones I've set up with tracer and we've got ELRS there as well.
[168.98] Stephen: I think the one on the end, the dead cap on mirrors.
[174.1] Stephen: On that side, that's actually SBUS fast-forward one with the DJI remote.
[180.46] Stephen: But yeah, the idea was to get the mixer, which is the stuff that's reading your gimbals,
[187.02] Stephen: performing the calculations and outputting your radio channels, to get the data send
[191.38] Stephen: of that in sync with the data receive of your TX.
[197.54] Stephen: And previously, they were both just flailing around randomly in the air.
[203.18] Stephen: And they'd link up and if you're lucky, you'd get data sending on one side at the same time
[208.58] Stephen: as the other one was receiving and your data would be of a predictable latency.
[213.74] Stephen: But more often than not, one was ready to send when the other wasn't ready to receive
[218.48] Stephen: or the other one's waiting to receive and the other one doesn't have any data yet.
[222.58] Stephen: And this causes jitter, which is in many ways far worse than latency because at least latency
[227.98] Stephen: you can calculate for and you can work around.
[231.06] Stephen: But jitter, if your commands are arriving, some sooner, some later, that really messes
[238.14] Stephen: with any sort of filtering that you might want to do and you have to have a nice big
[242.02] Stephen: lag to make up for the variable latency so you can process it out.
[245.74] Stephen: So that just kind of causes problems for beta flight and everyone else.
[251.22] Stephen: So the idea with Crossfire Shot or Mixer Sync, as it's more properly known, is to pack it
[258.54] Stephen: so that the mixer sends data when the module is ready to receive data and as fast as possible
[265.18] Stephen: as well, remove some of the sort of latency that's acceptable when you're messing around
[269.66] Stephen: with FrSky systems in the D8 era.
[273.22] Stephen: That seemed great.
[274.22] Stephen: Like, oh, we can do it in under 30 milliseconds, fine, don't worry about it, it's fine.
[278.34] Stephen: But you move into an era where even FrSky is targeting like 15 milliseconds and all
[283.94] Stephen: of a sudden some of those inconsistencies and wasted time in the code really makes a
[291.14] Stephen: difference.
[292.14] Stephen: So it's tightening up that.
[293.14] Stephen: And we see that going from V2 to now V3, they've taken that idea and tried to remove some of
[298.78] Stephen: the useless functionality and remove jitter and latency even further.
[302.7] Stephen: And also to give you an extra bit of precision, the V3 is going to take you from 10-bit values
[309.32] Stephen: up to 11-bit values.
[310.98] Stephen: So the sampling rate, if anyone remembers good old Nyquist theorem and all this crap,
[316.98] Stephen: the sampling rate, the amount of resolution you give describes the number of possible
[322.22] Stephen: levels.
[323.26] Stephen: So you can sample as fast as you want, but if you've only got a certain number of steps
[327.2] Stephen: you can go in, that's going to introduce stepping in your response.
[329.84] Stephen: And by the sound of it, there was actually a fair bit of averaging this out and moving
[335.2] Stephen: it from one scale to another scale that was introducing a lot of fudge to the actual value
[340.42] Stephen: of your gimbals as beta flight was reading them.
[343.82] Stephen: So not only are they accelerating this and removing jitter, but they're also adding some
[348.32] Stephen: precision to the signal.
[349.64] Stephen: So that range between 1,000 and 2,000 can be more cleanly read by beta flight than it
[357.48] Stephen: was before when it was going through a little bit of fudging and losing some precision.
[364.04] Frank: For us, our Williams, will we be able to feel any of this?
[369.4] Stephen: I definitely felt the latency change.
[371.96] Stephen: You can feel some of it going from something like an XM plus to Tracer.
[377.52] Stephen: That was noticeable, definitely.
[380.32] Stephen: Especially the small stuff, if you fly micros like two and a half or three inch and you
[384.6] Stephen: fly them near obstacles, you can definitely feel a difference.
[387.84] Stephen: If you're just cruising around, maybe not, but you take some quite aggressively set up
[393.56] Stephen: a little two and a half inch quad and thrash it round to a couple of trees and you can
[397.94] Stephen: definitely feel a difference.
[399.44] Curry: It's interesting because I really felt the difference going to crossfire prior to crossfire
[406.2] Curry: shot over asbestos anyway.
[408.32] Curry: I was going to ask, how are they doing the, I'm ready to receive, send me some packets.
[413.64] Curry: Is it actually like a protocol that's, because it sounds a bit like they were on UDP and
[418.96] Curry: they've gone to TCP in networking terms, but is it just the fact that they're like, OK,
[423.6] Curry: I'm agreeing that you're going to send stuff every X millisecond and I'm going to be ready
[427.8] Curry: to receive every X milliseconds?
[429.2] Curry: Or is it like a connection based protocol where it's saying, ready, send me some stuff,
[433.36] Curry: got that, send me the next stuff?
[435.4] Stephen: Well, it's a single wire UART for EOLRS.
[439.0] Stephen: I think R9 and other stuff is a regular two wire UART, but I need to, I would need to
[446.64] Stephen: actually sit down and read the commits and I haven't sat down and read the commits.
[452.56] Stephen: If you want me to, I can do that and reply back in the chat.
[455.88] Stephen: You've come here unprepared to answer my questions.
[460.36] Stephen: I was busy soldering up some new receivers for EOLRS.
[464.92] Stephen: I've got one with diversity there.
[467.44] Stephen: So I think it's just structure.
[468.92] Frank: Be careful, Gary's got more questions about that as well, so, you know.
[471.6] Stephen: Oh, right, it's just structure.
[472.76] Stephen: I think there were two dissimilar systems that happened to work together and get by,
[478.12] Stephen: but the fit and finish on either side was quite rough and they seem to have just tightened
[482.24] Stephen: it up and have some kind of accepted definitions.
[484.4] Stephen: I should go back and read, I'll read the actual commits and I'll get back to you.
[488.6] Curry: No, it's interesting because normally you would expect, although it's a little bit haywire,
[492.52] Curry: if something's just like, here's all my commands and every time it's ready to read,
[496.92] Curry: oh, here's a command.
[497.92] Curry: And if I'm missing stuff out in between, it doesn't really matter because I haven't got
[501.84] Curry: the resolution to get that.
[502.84] Curry: So I'll just get the next command when I'm ready to read it and that's generally OK.
[506.92] Curry: So, yeah, it's interesting that that was causing jitter for people because I mean, most
[510.92] Curry: people would say when they went from using S bus over the crossfire, they instantly
[516.04] Curry: noticed it's like, I mean, for me, it was like a little bit weird.
[519.04] Curry: It took me a little while to get used to it because it was so responsive on the sticks.
[522.36] Curry: But if there's yet another level of responsiveness, it'd be interesting.
[527.08] Curry: I look forward to trying this.
[530.48] Frank: Tony's just muted himself.
[532.64] Frank: I don't know if that means he's lost interest or what's going on there.
[539.8] Frank: He's playing with a dog.
[541.12] Frank: Dog come up on my lap.
[542.32] Frank: I didn't want to make noises because I'm going to have a stab at an analogy of what's going
[552.72] Frank: on here and tell me if this is far off.
[560.12] Frank: So from what I understand, the computer in the in your transmitter, the body of your
[567.96] Frank: transmitter reads the gimbals and sticks a message up on a whiteboard to say, he's got
[575.24] Frank: the stick at this position.
[576.92] Frank: And then the computer in the transmitter module looks at that whiteboard and goes, that's
[584.12] Frank: what I need to tell the receiver to to pass on to the flight controller.
[588.04] Frank: And then what we don't say that that has now changed because the problem with that is that
[597.64] Frank: you don't know how long it's been up on the whiteboard for.
[600.6] Frank: You don't know how long it's going to be up until the next time it's read.
[604.52] Frank: It could just you could have one up there and you wipe it off before anyone's read it and you
[609.08] Frank: don't know what's going on.
[609.88] Frank: So either they're both agreeing how how often it's going to be changed on the whiteboard or
[618.32] Frank: they're getting rid of the whiteboard and the two computers are actually just talking
[623.08] Frank: directly to each other to say this is the number.
[626.2] Frank: And so there's no you get rid of the whiteboard, you get rid of the buffer and you just
[631.16] Frank: directly passing stuff along.
[633.68] Frank: Is that is that a reasonable analogy?
[635.88] Stephen: Yeah, pretty much.
[637.12] Stephen: Pretty much.
[638.36] Curry: Although the problem comes when you talk directly to each other, then you have to have extra
[643.04] Curry: language to say, give me something.
[645.92] Curry: OK, sent it.
[647.32] Curry: Give me another one.
[648.08] Curry: OK, sent it, which can be slower than just like here are some stuff.
[652.84] Curry: Take take the next one you get.
[654.12] Curry: That's what I was interested in.
[655.56] Stephen: That's a connection oriented protocol.
[657.24] Stephen: So, yeah, you're right.
[658.36] Stephen: UDP versus TCP is the one that jumps to mind if you work with computers.
[662.32] Stephen: That's a connection oriented.
[664.24] Stephen: But neither is not particularly fast protocol either.
[666.88] Stephen: Right. It's it's just designed to make sure that stuff arrives.
[673.36] Stephen: So what you generally do when you want to have something running fast is you'd have a sync
[678.84] Stephen: signal and both sides acknowledge the existence of a clock like with pro audio gear.
[683.52] Stephen: You'd have a shared clock signal between the two sides and you'd transmit and receive
[688.16] Stephen: according to that shared clock.
[689.76] Stephen: So I think it's it's more like a shared clock system than and have you got it yet?
[694.84] Stephen: Yes, I've got it.
[695.84] Stephen: All right. Another one's coming up.
[697.2] Stephen: OK, have you got it yet?
[699.76] Curry: And Jack is wiggling some of us, I believe more like a guess how the old if I think of PPM, I
[706.72] Curry: always think of like here is a little wig on an oscilloscope and then we leave a big gap to
[711.68] Curry: indicate that's the end and that is your sync signal.
[714.52] Curry: It's kind of just agreeing what is the sync going to be and targeting a higher rate of
[722.24] Stephen: mixer updates as well.
[723.68] Stephen: I don't know what the mixer updates were before, but it also seems to have been agreed that
[727.76] Stephen: 250 Hertz for OpenTX is is a good rate to send mixer updates.
[733.56] Stephen: And I have a feeling although I was going to try and read the code, but I can't really do that
[737.32] Stephen: same time as being in the show.
[739.36] Stephen: Multitask like that.
[741.2] Stephen: You were soldering.
[742.08] Jack: You had plenty of time if he comes at you again, just say that you understand Linux and he'll
[749.6] Jack: get distracted by asking me a question about it.
[753.96] Stephen: So just by agreeing that the mixer should be sending updates more frequently, I think is a
[758.88] Stephen: big part of it as well.
[760.4] Stephen: The mixer doesn't seem to have been targeting any specific update interval.
[764.44] Stephen: OpenTX is now targeting 250 Hertz and interestingly, EdgeTX, which I think was thrown
[769.88] Stephen: around as well.
[770.92] Stephen: One of the things that they're pushing for is a 500 Hertz or maybe even 1000 Hertz updates.
[776.24] Stephen: And you see this with gaming mice, right?
[778.12] Stephen: And I guess few of your gamers, I think Curry's writing a game.
[781.92] Stephen: So probably seen all the ridiculous gaming peripherals and polling rates that they do.
[786.92] Stephen: So the idea is to be able to get those updates.
[790.72] Stephen: Yeah, exactly.
[791.48] Jack: Yeah.
[792.48] Jack: My mouse has got onboard storage.
[794.4] Jack: I don't know why.
[796.48] Frank: Is it to score all the pretty colors?
[799.76] Frank: I don't think I'm looking there.
[801.32] Jack: Yeah, I don't know.
[804.88] Jack: And it's got the speed.
[805.72] Curry: So you can store your LED order that you want to fasten that.
[809.76] Jack: No, like it stores the tracking motion and all that.
[814.2] Jack: And I've got a really fast clicky button as well.
[817.56] Frank: You can turn it into like a persistence of vision LED screen just by waving it about.
[823.16] Jack: I don't know.
[823.64] Jack: Why does a mouse need onboard storage like black or white?
[827.76] Stephen: Why does a mouse need LEDs?
[830.44] Stephen: So you can see it in the dark when you're draining your batteries.
[837.48] Curry: And if you want to change, I guess.
[840.68] Curry: But what do we want?
[841.96] Jack: I can't wait to see.
[843.52] Jack: Tom, will you let me know if that gets in?
[846.88] Jack: Stating.
[848.84] Jack: That's not going to stay in.
[850.52] Jack: No.
[851.44] Curry: So what do we need to try crossfire shot?
[854.16] Curry: Because most of us have crossfire, don't we?
[856.64] Curry: Tony does.
[857.32] Curry: Jad does.
[857.84] Curry: I do.
[860.16] Curry: I do not.
[861.24] Stephen: I'm afraid you know.
[862.92] Stephen: The original one was coming out with all these crafty builds from TBS where they've
[867.12] Stephen: done private builds of OpenTX, but it's in main line OpenTX now.
[872.36] Stephen: So if you're on a recent OpenTX build, and I think now that 2.3.12 has come out, you
[877.88] Stephen: should probably aim for that if you've got OpenTX.
[880.36] Stephen: If you're feeling a little bit funky and you're running Express LRS, you might
[883.64] Stephen: consider moving to EdgeTX because that's going to unlock 500 hertz updates, which
[889.4] Stephen: maybe you can't feel it, but can't hurt.
[891.4] Curry: So you can make that move.
[893.0] Curry: You've come up with two buzzwords we need to talk about in one sentence there.
[896.96] Curry: Open LRS and Edge.
[898.84] Curry: Nice segue.
[901.24] Curry: Yeah.
[901.72] Stephen: So E LRS was this, Hey, everyone's got all this FR SkyR 9 hardware around that they
[909.52] Stephen: seem loath to actually do anything useful with, but it's fairly easy to program.
[914.72] Stephen: So people started, you know, trying to do an over the air protocol for that.
[918.44] Stephen: And they did very successfully and they were able to crank out more performance
[922.96] Stephen: than FR Sky ever got out of it.
[926.4] Stephen: And that was very popular, but as with Crossfire and all these other 900 megahertz
[933.56] Stephen: or 868 megahertz protocols, the antennas are massive.
[938.4] Stephen: And so they took that over the air protocol and ran it on 2.4 gig as well.
[943.32] Stephen: And that's kind of where we are at the moment.
[945.12] Stephen: You can get a variety of different transmitters.
[948.52] Stephen: I've got a little tiny one on the tealight there.
[952.56] Stephen: I've got a happy model one somewhere in a, in a deviation TX radio there as well.
[959.48] Stephen: And you can get very, very cheap receivers for it.
[963.0] Stephen: So instead of having to go to, you know, say, Oh, I've only got 15 quid for a
[968.28] Stephen: receiver, or I guess I'll have to go and get an FR Sky and you can take your 15
[974.12] Stephen: quid or even 12 pounds and get something from ELRS that that's going to completely
[979.08] Stephen: whoop the pants off that old FR Sky receiver and probably out to Tracer as well.
[985.4] Stephen: If you're happy to jump through a few hoops, generally being learning a new
[991.48] Stephen: configurator app, it's not terribly hard.
[995.52] Stephen: The EP series from happy model.
[997.72] Stephen: I'd absolutely recommend because they've got built in wifi.
[1001.24] Stephen: If you've done all this raspberry pie messing around and you've probably
[1005.08] Stephen: encountered a espresso and they're 8266 and ESP 32 chips, right?
[1012.2] Stephen: And these are super cheap, super low end microcontrollers with integrated wifi.
[1018.92] Stephen: Um, they've got a little bit flash, little tiny amount of RAM, but most
[1022.72] Stephen: importantly, they've got wifi on them.
[1024.28] Stephen: And so you can get something that is the size of something very small, which
[1029.2] Stephen: I've probably got on a packet somewhere around the desk.
[1031.32] Stephen: You can get something that's a 10 mil on a side.
[1034.44] Stephen: And I know I've got one some here, but they're so small.
[1036.36] Stephen: I can't tell which packets are empty and which aren't just there.
[1040.08] Stephen: So this is not going to work on the camera.
[1042.84] Stephen: You see that little dot in the middle of there next to my fingertip?
[1045.64] Stephen: No, that is an ELRS, uh, EP receiver.
[1050.6] Stephen: That's an EP two and that's got a UFL on it.
[1053.48] Stephen: Right.
[1053.84] Stephen: And that, that will run you about a tenner, maybe 12, given some shipping.
[1058.92] Stephen: Um, and that, that gives you the full 2.4 gig range that you see everyone boasting
[1063.88] Stephen: about, you know, get out to 30 kilometers if you want.
[1067.32] Stephen: Um, but yeah, and it's the size of my finger, my fingernail.
[1072.12] Stephen: And they've also got one of these wifi boards on there as well.
[1075.56] Stephen: So the entire back face of the chip is taken up with an ESP32, which if you
[1083.6] Stephen: don't connect to it in 20 seconds, automatically powers itself on and
[1088.48] Stephen: starts hosting a wifi access point.
[1091.6] Stephen: And you go look, wow, exactly.
[1093.84] Stephen: Yeah, this gets better.
[1094.76] Stephen: You know, no, no farting around with cables and UARTs and soldering
[1098.68] Stephen: in STM adapters or anything.
[1101.36] Stephen: No JTAG or anything.
[1102.64] Stephen: You just wait for the wifi access point to appear, log into it with, it's
[1107.28] Stephen: called express LRS RX and it's got a password express LRS and it will host
[1112.6] Stephen: the webpage and the webpage says, select your firmware file and click upload.
[1118.84] Stephen: And you do that and you wait and give it like 10 seconds to actually save all
[1123.52] Stephen: that stuff to flash once it's done the upload so that the right is complete.
[1128.88] Stephen: And then you're done.
[1130.52] Stephen: And it'll reboot itself and your radio reconnect and boom, you've got your
[1135.16] Stephen: new firmware version installed.
[1136.44] Stephen: So it's, it's an absolute doddle to manage.
[1138.56] Stephen: If you get one of the happy, the EP series, the PP, the tiny PPs, as they
[1143.64] Stephen: were, definitely named, do not have wifi.
[1148.12] Stephen: That's got wifi.
[1148.8] Stephen: It's much easier.
[1149.6] Jack: Me and Tony are amused, but also, uh, scared because I don't, I don't think
[1155.68] Jack: me and Tony can spell open LRS in order to.
[1159.44] Jack: Express it again, access to the, what happens if you haven't got wifi
[1164.88] Jack: on your computer, are you screwed?
[1166.64] Stephen: You can do beta flight pass-through.
[1168.24] Stephen: So you get that thing hooked up onto a UART, um, just like you do for, uh,
[1172.8] Stephen: Oh, okay.
[1175.76] Stephen: Yeah.
[1176.52] Stephen: Yes.
[1176.96] Stephen: You can just use that configurator and it'll treat it as a UART and upload.
[1182.0] Curry: I think you have to bridge.
[1184.32] Curry: This is like Tony trying to bridge it with a piece of gaffer table.
[1189.6] Jack: I haven't got wifi on my computer.
[1191.8] Jack: I don't know.
[1194.48] Jack: I own a Mac phone.
[1196.64] Curry: I mean, I phone has wifi believe it or not.
[1201.28] Jack: Yeah.
[1203.36] Curry: Yeah.
[1203.64] Stephen: He's got terrible file behavior.
[1205.76] Jack: Um, what is the support?
[1208.92] Stephen: Like buy a USB wifi card.
[1211.68] Jack: Yeah.
[1213.6] Jack: Well, so what's the support for if you're a scumbag like curry works fine.
[1217.64] Stephen: Um, so all this is written the same as the beta flight, I now have configurator
[1223.48] Stephen: the same as the BL Heli S configurator.
[1225.68] Stephen: It's all just a node JS app, right?
[1227.44] Stephen: So it runs on pretty much anything.
[1230.0] Stephen: I've run Ubuntu and that's normally a complete pain in the butt to run things
[1233.6] Stephen: on, right?
[1233.96] Stephen: I'm that Linux guy and I've reported Linux bugs to curry for his game as well.
[1237.72] Stephen: We're testing on Linux.
[1241.04] Stephen: Of course he hasn't because no one does.
[1243.08] Stephen: That's fine, but it doesn't go with the wide monitor.
[1246.64] Stephen: Yeah.
[1247.08] Stephen: Yeah.
[1248.12] Stephen: Sorry.
[1249.16] Stephen: I'm the one person that tested on Linux.
[1253.04] Frank: Have you not tested it on Linux with an ultra wide monitor?
[1256.84] Jack: I love, I love that you're that guy.
[1260.8] Jack: One user and get hub using Linux.
[1263.48] Jack: Yeah.
[1263.68] Stephen: Does that mean we also have the, this doesn't render properly try Vulcan.
[1266.68] Curry: Oh, that's okay now.
[1268.28] Curry: Yeah.
[1268.6] Curry: Yeah.
[1268.92] Curry: Yeah.
[1269.24] Curry: Just me.
[1269.96] Curry: Yeah.
[1270.32] Stephen: But yeah, it was like, so, um, we need, we need some sort of module to use it, but
[1277.32] Curry: what is it supported then with open TX is there like a, a, an open LRS option on
[1285.7] Curry: external or are we using some sort of generic each end of the connection you're
[1291.26] Curry: using on a CRSF protocol, which is, um, you know, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a
[1297.18] Stephen: each end of the connection you're using on the CRSF protocol, which is documented
[1302.86] Stephen: in a part of beta flight and it's part of open TX and that's a wire protocol.
[1307.42] Stephen: Express LRS is the over the air protocol that joins those two wire
[1311.22] Stephen: connections together, right?
[1312.74] Stephen: So CRSF on the transmitter, CRSF on the receiver.
[1317.42] Stephen: So all your telemetry and everything's going over CRSF and on the open TX
[1321.94] Stephen: side, all your, um, your module signals are using CRSF.
[1325.22] Stephen: So no real updates required.
[1327.82] Stephen: If you want to go configure your transmitter, you drop a Lua script on and
[1332.06] Stephen: that's going to let you set things like your output power.
[1334.7] Stephen: It's going to let you set the, uh, the packet rate, uh, and also enable
[1339.74] Stephen: wifi update modes on the TX as well, because your TX can also run as a wifi
[1343.98] Stephen: point, do the upgrade the same way I described.
[1346.86] Frank: Wow.
[1348.5] Frank: So on that point, given that so much effort has obviously been put into making
[1352.42] Frank: it easy to update the firmware on these receivers and modules, how often are you
[1359.82] Frank: updating the firmware on these things?
[1362.18] Frank: Is it something where like every time you fly, you're updating it?
[1366.54] Stephen: Um, there was one thing where I wanted, I wanted to get it working on a very
[1373.46] Stephen: old radio who reaches behind him and grabs a particularly old radio.
[1377.1] Stephen: Some of you may remember back in the days before we had open TX, we had
[1381.06] Stephen: deviation TX, right?
[1383.94] Stephen: And this is a T8 SGV2.
[1387.18] Stephen: It's not particularly shiny or new, but I like it.
[1390.34] Stephen: And it's small.
[1391.82] Stephen: There's no, it's not broken or anything.
[1393.34] Stephen: And I have in the back of that a project box with express LRS in it.
[1399.66] Stephen: Um, again, nothing particularly fancy here.
[1403.66] Stephen: I can't run Lua scripts.
[1405.46] Stephen: So that was a problem because I can configure all my settings for the
[1410.1] Stephen: module and I, while I could plug in my tracer, my tracer module worked perfectly.
[1416.18] Stephen: And you might think, why would tracer work?
[1418.62] Stephen: This is an ancient radius.
[1419.66] Stephen: Wasn't around with tracer was a thing.
[1421.7] Stephen: Well, because, um, TBS use this CRSF protocol and have kind of a fixed data
[1429.5] Stephen: format, all their menus are actually generated on the module and not in the radio.
[1435.34] Stephen: So the TBS Lua script is actually just like a menu driver and it asks the
[1441.46] Stephen: module, what options have you got?
[1443.46] Stephen: What are the allowed values for those options?
[1445.46] Stephen: What order should I draw them in?
[1446.66] Stephen: And it draws them like that, which is why you've got the TBS Lua script and the
[1450.66] Stephen: TBS agent light script working just fine for any piece of TBS equipment, because
[1455.62] Stephen: all they're doing is reading the allowed values and the text strings to put in
[1458.98] Stephen: them off the module and putting them on the screen.
[1461.78] Stephen: And so TBS that works beautifully for Express LRS.
[1465.1] Stephen: They didn't do that.
[1466.22] Stephen: They had their own funky little Lua system that had a hard coded set of
[1470.82] Stephen: strings in the Lua script and a set of arrays it was poking through and all this
[1476.34] Stephen: crap, but, but I worked with one of the guys, um, whose name, uh, stoned dog,
[1483.54] Stephen: one of the helpful developers there.
[1485.7] Stephen: Um, and we actually kicked the tires on a pull request that's going in sometime
[1489.82] Stephen: after 1.0 we're on 1.0 RC nine right now.
[1493.26] Stephen: So it's not in right now, but I'm running a PR on this that I worked on where it
[1498.34] Stephen: actually adopts exactly the same system that TBS uses.
[1502.58] Stephen: So all the strings and the menus are driven from the module and are not
[1507.78] Stephen: stored on the radio.
[1509.18] Stephen: So any radio firmware would work.
[1512.3] Stephen: You'd be able to run any crusty old radio.
[1514.22] Stephen: So long as it works with crossfire, it would work with express LRS.
[1518.98] Stephen: Um, and that was quite nice to get it working.
[1521.18] Stephen: I must say that was, so that's, that's the occasion when I've been
[1524.26] Stephen: doing lots of updates by and large.
[1526.3] Stephen: No, since I think RC four had a big bug, they fixed, but anything after RC four
[1531.38] Stephen: when RC nine now has been working pretty consistently for me.
[1534.94] Stephen: I'm not a big long range guy though.
[1540.1] Curry: What are the sort of enhancements that, um, open LRS has over express
[1545.34] Curry: regular stuff, but also open LRS was a, an old open project.
[1549.5] Curry: Yeah.
[1549.78] Curry: Yeah.
[1550.06] Curry: It was that predates it.
[1551.18] Curry: I don't think it's actually, but it was a much older, I think four, three,
[1554.7] Curry: three, six, yeah, express.
[1556.22] Curry: So, um, I mean, specifically you've got range and latency over 2.4.
[1560.78] Curry: What about, um, stuff like you mentioned our nine people flashing their old
[1564.58] Curry: stuff because I think three, so I've lost interest.
[1566.7] Curry: So that's an obvious way to go.
[1567.78] Curry: But what are the sort of in heart you'd have over the sort of
[1570.74] Curry: vanilla R nine system?
[1572.82] Stephen: Well, you've got a much wider choice of our exes.
[1575.42] Stephen: So you can have one of these tiny 10 mill on our side, our exes, or you
[1579.5] Stephen: could have something that's as much chunkier.
[1582.02] Stephen: Um, here's, here's another one, for example, that's similar in size
[1586.22] Stephen: to like an old XM plus, but this guy, if you want to go long range can do
[1591.3] Stephen: 100 milliwatt telemetry, not, you know, 100 milliwatt, what that's normal.
[1597.34] Stephen: Yeah.
[1597.5] Stephen: On a TX it's normal, but your telemetry connections normally like 10
[1600.9] Stephen: milliwatt, 15 milliwatt, this does a hundred milliwatt telemetry, which
[1604.34] Stephen: means you, your telemetry is just going to run for a very long time.
[1608.38] Jack: Right.
[1608.66] Jack: We, we, um, we do an audio podcast.
[1611.46] Jack: So if you can say like, oh, so, okay.
[1616.74] Stephen: So you are seeing a, a anti-static bag that I'm holding up with a receiver,
[1621.62] Stephen: which is roughly the same size as an XM plus, and this is a CEFR mini receiver.
[1627.7] Stephen: That CEFR mini is running their own proprietary protocol, but I got an ST
[1633.3] Stephen: link and, and messed around with that and flashed it and the CE while being the
[1637.9] Stephen: same size as an XM plus or RXSR is capable of outputting that 100 milliwatt telemetry.
[1646.3] Jack: I had an SSR on my desk somewhere, but no, no, you're doing a fine job.
[1650.82] Jack: It was just like, cause we, we were comparing sizes, you know, mini PB and
[1654.9] Stephen: work, like why use it, but you've got this massive choice of receivers and
[1661.9] Stephen: you can go for super cheap and small, or you can go for something a bit
[1664.58] Stephen: more expensive with diversity Dave's story asking, if it's not been asked,
[1668.86] Stephen: what range can I expect from the ceramic antenna?
[1671.74] Stephen: I read lots of posts from people on the discord in express LRS and they say,
[1676.82] Stephen: Oh, I was flying 15 miles with this in the middle of effing nowhere in America
[1683.42] Stephen: that might be entirely realistic where I fly in a, in a small crowded area, not
[1689.9] Stephen: central London, but fairly close to the center of London.
[1693.94] Stephen: There's a lot of wifi noise and the area I fly has a lot of people running wifi
[1698.26] Stephen: routers quite nearby, so it's swapped.
[1700.46] Stephen: I was getting fail safes on an XM plus at sort of 100, 200 meters.
[1707.02] Stephen: And when I'm running at 50 milliwatt with a little ceramic antenna, and I've got
[1714.02] Stephen: one buried in the worst place in the quad cocks of where I've jammed it into the guts
[1721.14] Stephen: of something, uh, it's in the front of this tiny two and a half inch at the front of
[1728.22] Stephen: the, you can't even see it's the front of the stack.
[1729.9] Stephen: It's about there where my finger is.
[1731.7] Stephen: There is a tiny EP two in there and it's occluded by screws and a 3d printed
[1739.06] Stephen: canopy and it's sat right on top of the ESCs, which is, it's all bad for signal.
[1744.1] Stephen: Generally speaking, it's far out flying the XM plus that used to have in there.
[1748.3] Stephen: I've got down to a link quality of 30 at about 150 meters.
[1755.02] Stephen: Just as I turned around, I had a blip where I think the battery and the
[1758.1] Stephen: quad and everything was between the RX and myself.
[1762.3] Stephen: Um, but the thing to mention is that it's very tolerant of low link quality.
[1766.94] Stephen: Whereas with FRS sky, you see that RSSI go down to an RSSI isn't RSSI with FRS sky,
[1773.46] Stephen: right?
[1773.66] Stephen: So they're in funky calculation.
[1775.1] Stephen: They munch it and they say, ah, it's the FRS sky magic number.
[1778.82] Stephen: And you know, intuitively, like if your FRS sky magic number goes down below 40,
[1783.1] Stephen: you're in trouble, but it doesn't necessarily mean the exact strength of
[1787.74] Stephen: the signal and you have to kind of figure it out and you think, Oh yeah,
[1790.1] Stephen: I've got from zero to a hundred, I'll be okay.
[1792.26] Stephen: Flying down to 10 and not and everything you get RX loss at like below 40
[1796.3] Stephen: somewhere, but whereas this guy will go down to a link quality of, of 30 or
[1801.42] Stephen: 25 and still be perfectly flyable.
[1804.02] Stephen: And if you're on 500 Hertz updates, that means that out of those 500 updates that
[1808.86] Stephen: you're expecting every second, you're only getting 25 or 30% of those.
[1813.38] Stephen: So your link quality is the percent of updates that you've received and you'd
[1817.46] Stephen: expect obviously to receive a hundred percent of your updates.
[1819.82] Stephen: But if you're on maybe, I think intuitively, and I haven't proven this, but I
[1824.34] Stephen: think if you're running a higher rate and you, you see a link quality of 30%,
[1828.3] Stephen: it's not necessarily so much to be worried about because you're still at 25%
[1833.38] Stephen: link quality, getting over a hundred updates a second through.
[1836.54] Stephen: So, Hmm, sure.
[1839.82] Curry: Yeah, that makes sense.
[1840.78] Curry: Aside from, if you, if you have an R nine, I know you can flash those a happy
[1846.98] Curry: model are doing some ready to buy receivers, be doing the PV content to me
[1851.1] Curry: today about a module and receivers they're bringing out.
[1853.78] Curry: Is there anybody else that has them?
[1856.14] Stephen: There's a Namino RC, a Chinese manufacturer, and they seem to be selling
[1860.38] Stephen: mainly on the Chinese market, but they do have really fantastic looking TX with it
[1864.74] Stephen: with a fan built in.
[1865.7] Stephen: And I think they've got heat sinks on there as very high power output, not sure
[1869.54] Stephen: you'd really need that unless you're taking your wing and trying to reach
[1872.66] Stephen: France, but, um, yeah, it outpaces DJI.
[1877.62] Stephen: So say that DJI like on 700, this on 100 will, will outfly it.
[1884.14] Stephen: So it's not really a problem.
[1887.66] Stephen: Um, other manufacturers, uh, there's a lot of DIY stuff I recommend going
[1892.18] Stephen: on the discord express LRS.
[1894.62] Stephen: Most of their discussion happens on a discord discord.
[1898.42] Stephen: You can find linked off their GitHub site and there's a buy and sell listing.
[1902.5] Stephen: And you can give your money to you, you know, your fellow FPV enthusiasts and
[1907.06] Stephen: get them to make you a module.
[1908.78] Stephen: And the module that I've been flying mainly on this one was made by a guy in
[1913.82] Stephen: the UK who got the parts, uh, ordered a bunch of circuit boards, soldered them
[1918.34] Stephen: up, you know, pocketed a few quid out of the deal and sent me it.
[1922.02] Stephen: And he did 3d print as well as pretty nice 3d print.
[1924.9] Stephen: Um, so yeah, I think it's one of its values that we're not really mentioning
[1928.9] Stephen: is that is a community oriented project and people aren't just, you know,
[1933.14] Stephen: taking a bunch of money and, uh, and disappearing with it to buy new Mercedes
[1937.5] Stephen: that it's, you know, FPV enthusiasts helping FPV enthusiasts, which is nice to see.
[1944.42] Curry: Yeah.
[1946.58] Curry: Sorry.
[1946.86] Curry: I was just gonna say, is there any, any problems from TBS because it's using CRSF?
[1951.86] Curry: I mean, they kind of open sourced, uh, audio, but they weren't, it wasn't
[1957.38] Curry: like open sources, like buy a license from us, else we're going to keep
[1960.46] Curry: updating the protocol to cut you third parties out sort of thing.
[1963.18] Stephen: So all it's really doing is emulating the interfaces that already coded
[1967.54] Stephen: into open TX and beta flight.
[1969.82] Stephen: So those are all entirely open source implementations that have been released
[1974.02] Stephen: to the community to support their hardware.
[1977.02] Stephen: I dare say if they kicked up a big fuss about it, that the team would be able
[1980.74] Stephen: to move to something new, but really I don't think TBS would have a leg to stand
[1986.26] Stephen: on and I don't know, I don't think it's in anyone's best interests to try
[1990.46] Stephen: and infight to this degree, you know, if they've got a better product, then
[1994.1] Stephen: let the product stand in its merits.
[1995.7] Stephen: I don't know.
[1995.98] Stephen: Have you met Traki, he likes the drama a little bit.
[1999.42] Stephen: He does like the drama, doesn't he?
[2000.9] Stephen: You know, I heard the podcast about the latest crossfire shot V3 thing, and
[2004.54] Stephen: it was all very, uh, hyperbolic.
[2008.34] Frank: This episode was recorded in front of a live online audience, downloaded and
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[2025.66] Frank: Consider joining them and you'll also get other online benefits.
[2029.02] Frank: Find out more at patreon.com forward slash let's drone out.
[2034.98] Frank: So Curry, what, what hardware have you got to run Express LRS?
[2039.02] Frank: Cause you said you were planning on it.
[2042.1] Curry: Yeah, I've, I've still got, um, cause I used to do a load of tests on, on
[2045.86] Curry: R9 and I have to say I had a reasonable experience on R9, uh, a lot better than
[2050.14] Curry: others, but one thing that free sky, uh, awful or, or what free sky do is
[2055.94] Curry: literally just like lose interest in it.
[2057.66] Curry: So it's like, oh, it's got this, it's going to be amazing.
[2060.5] Curry: I was like, well, here's, here's the bugs I found.
[2062.86] Curry: Can you fix them?
[2063.66] Curry: It's like, well, we don't talk about what bugs we fix or what we don't fix.
[2066.86] Curry: We'll just have a release at some point.
[2068.62] Curry: So I've got three or four quads, which have R9 on them.
[2072.74] Curry: Um, and I've got, I think free R9 modules.
[2076.34] Curry: So I got no problem in like flashing one of those and flashing some receivers,
[2080.78] Curry: but I've also got one of these, uh, nano modules and receivers turning up from
[2085.98] Curry: bigger FPV at some point.
[2087.1] Curry: So I'll certainly be testing it out, um, seeing how it goes, but yeah, I like the
[2091.74] Curry: idea of having, um, I guess cause like free sky used to be like, we always love
[2098.22] Curry: free sky and then it turned into some sort of big evil company at some point
[2101.86] Curry: because it's like, these are really nice receivers.
[2103.94] Curry: They're quite cheap and they go quite well.
[2106.06] Curry: And then they're like, Oh no, you have to update to this and it's going to screw
[2109.14] Curry: you all up and we're going to stop those receivers cause we want to sell you this.
[2112.58] Curry: So it's nice to think about, here's something that the community has developed
[2117.22] Curry: and you can buy a big range of things.
[2119.1] Curry: And it's already working on a very well-established protocol.
[2122.54] Curry: Right.
[2122.9] Curry: Um, and it sounds really good.
[2125.42] Curry: I mean, sometimes one of the problems with open source is, um, people can get very
[2130.74] Curry: excited about doing this interesting development and it never gets documented
[2135.06] Curry: very well because they're all off doing very interesting things.
[2137.98] Curry: But it sounds like from what I'm hearing that there's a nice configurator and
[2142.26] Curry: there's Louis grips and it's relatively easy to do.
[2144.62] Curry: And it's already operating on established things we're already using.
[2147.78] Curry: So I'm interested.
[2150.14] Stephen: Yeah, it's, it's nice to see that actually there's communities interested
[2154.78] Stephen: in keeping their old hardware running and not just putting it in a landfill.
[2158.38] Stephen: I think that's, it's nice to see.
[2160.14] Stephen: And there's clearly money to be made.
[2161.54] Stephen: Like beta flight has proven to manufacturers that there is a whole crap
[2165.74] Stephen: ton of money to be made by selling stuff that works with open source firmware.
[2170.78] Stephen: The, in fact, if anything, not having to write the firmware frees you as a
[2175.74] Stephen: board manufacturer to do what you do best and create a really good board and not
[2180.46] Stephen: get bogged down in maintaining drivers and maintaining firmware, you're just
[2186.78] Stephen: able to go and say, this is how my board works.
[2189.14] Stephen: Here's a target definition, and then just get down to the business of
[2192.66] Stephen: shipping as many boards as you can.
[2196.96] Frank: Yeah.
[2197.2] Frank: We'll see who else picks that up.
[2200.32] Frank: I mean, let's, you know, season or two, I guess.
[2204.48] Frank: I'm sure there will be some others eventually.
[2207.08] Frank: I mean, even, you know, as we've seen with like the seriously pro and all
[2211.0] Frank: stuff like that, like anytime there's a well-defined system to start using,
[2217.56] Frank: some manufacturers will start picking up and making more boards.
[2220.52] Frank: And there'll be a bit of a race at the bottom of who can produce most the
[2224.64] Frank: cheapest that people are happy with.
[2227.24] Frank: So, I mean, there will obviously be some kind of word of mouth.
[2230.88] Frank: You know, if you find a system or at least a board that you like, then
[2234.68] Frank: share it, let us know with, we'd like to hear and get stuff picked up a bit more.
[2242.44] Frank: As son and dad FPV says now we need easy open HD FPV.
[2247.24] Frank: Yeah.
[2247.52] Frank: I mean, that's, that's the other thing is there's, you know, that's the other
[2252.2] Frank: kind of open source project that Curry's been the kind of, I'm, I'm waiting
[2257.12] Stephen: to see what it'd be really nice to hear what's happening on that community.
[2260.84] Stephen: Actually, I was tracking some of the open HD stuff around about December and I
[2264.92] Stephen: invested in a couple of single board computers, which I hoped I was going to
[2269.12] Stephen: be able to use and it sounded like one of the project members had some personal
[2273.72] Stephen: problems or that they lost a couple of project members because development has
[2278.08] Stephen: slowed greatly.
[2279.04] Stephen: They were talking about releasing version three in December.
[2282.24] Stephen: It's still not out now.
[2284.08] Stephen: If you look at the releases, it's, it's slowed a lot and I don't wish to, I don't
[2288.2] Stephen: want to wish them badly because I think they're doing an amazing project.
[2290.84] Stephen: It's really good.
[2292.08] Stephen: Um, but I hope that, you know, if anyone's out there who knows how to write code
[2297.04] Stephen: relating to, you know, HD video transmission or the ICs involved that, you
[2301.08] Stephen: know, please get involved there.
[2303.08] Stephen: I think they could use some people.
[2305.88] Curry: Yeah.
[2306.0] Curry: I think open HD are always going to be at a limit with the hardware they're using
[2311.28] Curry: because it's like, it's a raspberry pie and it's running Linux and that is
[2315.36] Curry: different than some F GPA that's dedicated to doing encoding and decoding
[2320.32] Curry: video, um, just on its single thing.
[2323.4] Curry: But there's, you know, there's faster single board computers out there that
[2327.04] Curry: can handle it better.
[2329.2] Curry: Uh, like the jets and nano brings to brings the stuff down.
[2332.0] Curry: But yeah, this is, this is the project I keep wanting to get back to, which I
[2335.92] Curry: should be able to now because I finished writing some stuff for a while.
[2338.6] Curry: So yeah, my next thing does return to open HD, see where I was and try and write
[2343.52] Curry: a blog post about it because I forgot what I did.
[2346.16] Curry: So I thought I now freeze out.
[2348.64] Curry: I'll flash that they, they, they did a bunch of releases.
[2352.72] Curry: Yeah.
[2352.96] Curry: And I know what you mean.
[2353.88] Curry: Cause the guy I was talking to was one of the main developers as I tried to
[2358.4] Curry: talk to him on telegram and he didn't respond.
[2360.16] Curry: I don't know if that's because he doesn't like me anymore or he didn't seem to be
[2363.76] Curry: there, but he doesn't seem to be in the discussions anymore.
[2365.72] Curry: So he was very much a leading figure.
[2368.24] Curry: So, uh, not quite sure what's going on there, but yeah, I hope to get back to
[2372.2] Curry: that and, and have a more of a play and document it a little bit more.
[2376.36] Curry: Cause unfortunately, as I said, one of the open source issues is everybody wants to
[2381.84] Curry: get in and write the exciting features, but it's, if you look at it from the
[2386.24] Curry: outside as a sort of a, a, a non, uh, like, like Jack and non Linux user, you'd
[2392.96] Curry: be like, what's this about?
[2394.0] Curry: And how do I, how do I work it?
[2395.8] Curry: That sort of thing.
[2396.64] Stephen: And then you've got people on the other side saying, well, it's just Debbie and
[2399.6] Stephen: running easy wifi broadcast.
[2401.24] Stephen: Why are you even bothering?
[2402.4] Stephen: Well, I could just roll my own version.
[2404.52] Stephen: And so it's, yeah, I'm unhelpful people on both extremes.
[2407.76] Stephen: Um, one thing that did jump into my mind while you were talking Kerry was they're
[2411.48] Stephen: actually trying to crowdfund their own board.
[2414.24] Stephen: I don't know if you remember that, but open HD was in talks with, uh, I believe
[2419.04] Stephen: all winner, I think, and they had this, uh, camera focused board, which had a very
[2424.08] Stephen: fast image signal processor ISP on it.
[2427.36] Stephen: And they were looking to leverage that for a custom board that was focused purely
[2431.32] Stephen: on what open HD needed.
[2433.04] Stephen: Um, that looked very interesting.
[2434.96] Curry: Interesting.
[2435.36] Curry: Cause that, that w I had a discussion.
[2438.72] Curry: We, we tried to have one of the guys on the show and he kept canceling on us.
[2441.96] Curry: So I asked him all the questions and that was one of the things that came up to get
[2445.24] Curry: it to the sort of latency that DJI would, would be a custom board.
[2449.2] Curry: I didn't know they'd got as far as trying to crowdfund it.
[2452.16] Stephen: Then we've got all the politics of DJI who kept up with that night.
[2455.44] Stephen: People run cam producing a camera for them and then Cadex throwing their toys
[2459.72] Stephen: out of the pram and saying, but we paid for the rights for that.
[2462.56] Stephen: What, why are you taking away our camera revenue?
[2465.4] Stephen: While Cadex, meanwhile, they're not making any cameras because they
[2467.84] Stephen: can't get the chips to make them.
[2470.12] Frank: And so that's, that's why they're, there's like a new update where they're
[2473.16] Frank: like encrypting something so that it doesn't work with any other cameras.
[2477.32] Stephen: Right.
[2477.72] Stephen: They're talking about requiring a specific chip on the camera, which it was, is the
[2482.84] Stephen: most nonsensical of marketeering because in order to do that, they'll actually be
[2486.96] Stephen: blocking their own Cadex Nebula Nano, which doesn't include that chip.
[2491.16] Stephen: So the only way they'll be able to do that is by destroying their own product line.
[2496.4] Stephen: And yet they're still like, yep, this is what we're going to do.
[2498.88] Stephen: Which is just, that is why you need open source.
[2501.72] Frank: I've also heard that they're coming out with a new camera for the DJI HD system.
[2507.76] Frank: That's going to be like a starlight, you know, night vision, not the night vision,
[2513.32] Frank: but low lux camera as well.
[2517.44] Frank: So see what happens with that.
[2519.08] Frank: If that's any, cause I feel like having seen some of the footage
[2522.36] Frank: from wings and wheels, it seems like that might have been useful.
[2526.64] Stephen: Oh yeah.
[2527.04] Stephen: The DJI cameras are really bad and low light.
[2529.64] Stephen: I run DJI, I'm not a convert by all by any means.
[2533.24] Stephen: Cause when you get to the smaller sizes or you want to fly in poor lighting,
[2537.12] Stephen: DJI is just a grainy mess.
[2539.24] Frank: Hmm.
[2542.44] Frank: I mean, other kind of projects that we've seen sort of developing over the years.
[2547.12] Frank: I mean, there's the FPV combat system that is, is now on sale in the UK.
[2552.12] Frank: The boards have arrived.
[2553.76] Frank: That's on sale.
[2554.64] Frank: People are getting them.
[2555.64] Frank: That's good to see.
[2557.32] Frank: Um, and again, I feel like that's a similar sort of, I don't think it is,
[2562.96] Frank: it might not technically be open source, but to me, it's got the same sort of
[2567.28] Frank: feel because it's had some developers put far too much effort into it and wait
[2572.08] Frank: three years of developing a million features on it before actually
[2576.88] Frank: releasing any hardware, but yeah, this is coming from enthusiasts.
[2581.12] Curry: They've made the boards, they're having to charge for them, but it's very
[2583.92] Curry: unlikely they'll get their investment, certainly in time and effort, but
[2588.2] Curry: they're doing it cause it's, it's a cool system.
[2590.44] Curry: It's fun to do.
[2591.56] Frank: Yeah, exactly.
[2592.6] Frank: Um, I really want to get one, put it on something and fly with some people in
[2599.96] Frank: the shoots, people down and probably get shot down more, but that's the thing
[2603.64] Frank: I want to do at some point.
[2605.2] Jack: Um, we'll see.
[2608.92] Jack: I was talking to a mutual friend of ours about getting a sewing machine
[2613.56] Frank: pedal and putting it in the trainer port so you can shoot me the foot.
[2623.76] Curry: So, so the other protocol thing we've been hearing a lot about, and I
[2627.8] Curry: don't think any of us has touched is edge.
[2630.64] Curry: This, uh, new radio.
[2634.76] Frank: Well, it's, it's a radio firmware as well.
[2638.08] Stephen: Oh, you want the speed on this?
[2641.76] Stephen: All right.
[2642.28] Stephen: So this guy is also running edge TX, by the way.
[2645.32] Stephen: It's T like, um, so when's, when's open TX 2.4 arriving?
[2654.06] Jack: Never, right.
[2656.9] Stephen: How long have we been asking for open TX 2.4?
[2660.14] Jack: But no, I never asked for updates.
[2661.74] Jack: I just like to stay on the moon.
[2665.26] Jack: Everything breaks and I read, I know the Louis scripts without
[2669.62] Stephen: characterizing people too rudely.
[2671.42] Stephen: And I, I don't want to make sweeping judgments.
[2673.58] Stephen: I'm not, I'm not an open TX.
[2676.62] Jack: However,
[2680.78] Jack: yeah.
[2683.58] Jack: Any of these expressed by any of our guests in the show personal
[2686.26] Jack: may not set it to views of others or other developers.
[2691.78] Stephen: Beautiful.
[2692.74] Stephen: Um, so the open TX community includes a lot of enthusiasts to have been
[2697.7] Stephen: using open TX since forever.
[2699.62] Stephen: And they're using it to fly aircraft line of sight.
[2701.94] Stephen: They're using it to fly things where the risk reward is, is this
[2708.1] Stephen: my groceries knocking on the door?
[2712.26] Stephen: I will finish this.
[2713.86] Stephen: The risk reward is, is a very, very much higher than a freestyle
[2717.78] Stephen: quad where you half expect to crash every time you put a pack in.
[2721.98] Stephen: And, and for those users, they do not want open TX implementing a
[2728.38] Stephen: bunch of fancy protocols that they are not going to use, which may
[2736.26] Stephen: influence code they're already using and stop their mixes or that
[2741.14] Stephen: incredibly complex switch combinations from working.
[2745.34] Stephen: And, and they, I think are effectively the break on open TX development.
[2751.38] Stephen: If we look at this, there's a focus from people who say too much risk.
[2755.42] Stephen: And what edge TX has done is the same thing in a certain way, clean
[2758.98] Stephen: flights and beta flight have done.
[2760.82] Stephen: That is an example.
[2762.22] Stephen: It's not the only example because there was a lot of politics, obviously.
[2766.06] Stephen: And in that with edge TX it's had the blessing from the open TX developers
[2770.58] Stephen: who effectively have said, okay, if you want to go and publish a nightly
[2775.42] Stephen: build of open TX, we're including all the features that we're not ready
[2779.06] Stephen: for yet, you can go and do that.
[2781.62] Stephen: But please distance it from us and don't in any way ruin the name of open TX.
[2788.38] Stephen: And this is with full disclaimer because I'm not in on these private
[2791.14] Stephen: conversations, but what edge TX does is take that open TX 2.4 code based
[2796.18] Stephen: release it right now with all the patches on top of what's currently in
[2800.3] Stephen: 2.4 that you might want things like touch screen support for color radios.
[2805.06] Stephen: Things like a hundred Hertz updates, things like, um, something coming
[2810.26] Stephen: in very soon that converts the ancient save format of open TX to a text file
[2814.5] Stephen: that you can actually edit as a human being instead of needing companion.
[2818.54] Stephen: And it allows all of those things to be happening now, instead of waiting
[2823.86] Stephen: for them to get to through the approval process of the socks and sandals brigade.
[2833.62] Jack: But they paved the way for us and didn't defend us when
[2837.38] Jack: yeah, I'm not saying they're bad people.
[2838.9] Stephen: It's just a reflection of priorities, right?
[2841.14] Stephen: Our priorities as, as quad pilots are probably going to crash, kind of
[2845.86] Stephen: crash a little bit every time we land.
[2848.06] Stephen: Um, you know, it's, it's not the same world for us.
[2852.02] Stephen: And I think edge TX reflects that that we'd like to have something that
[2855.14] Stephen: includes the latest features, lower latency, better performance.
[2858.66] Stephen: And maybe if it bugs out and doesn't show me my telemetry viewer perfectly,
[2864.18] Stephen: or some of the functions of very complex switch functions don't
[2867.66] Stephen: work exactly the same, okay, whatever.
[2870.82] Stephen: You know, it's not going to ruin our day as much.
[2872.98] Frank: Um, if you have fly barless servo mixing doesn't work, that's not the end of the world.
[2878.58] Frank: Um, so it's, it's maybe a kind of a reflection, like you say, almost that
[2884.22] Frank: there's enough of a community has built up that once the higher performance FPV
[2891.38] Frank: stuff that, I mean, amongst other things that there's enough of a community
[2897.86] Frank: there to build another version.
[2900.26] Frank: Um, and so it's kind of, is it, is it literally a form where people are saying,
[2904.14] Stephen: oh, but I've been using this special TBS build of open TX for, for two years.
[2909.54] Stephen: What, what this was supposed to be a temporary fix.
[2911.82] Stephen: Where's the permanent fix?
[2913.06] Stephen: And, and that question needed an answer sooner or later.
[2916.06] Stephen: And so this is the answer.
[2918.26] Jack: Is it safe to update to edge yet?
[2920.62] Jack: Have they got an official release?
[2922.22] Stephen: Um, if you've got a color radio, it's a little bit more complex.
[2925.38] Stephen: The general accepted wisdom is make sure to back up your models.
[2929.86] Stephen: Just do the models back up and settings back up, save it somewhere.
[2933.82] Stephen: I, I, you know, I saved it, it converted all my models just fine.
[2937.98] Stephen: I think that the tea light for all intents and purposes is
[2940.66] Stephen: equivalent to the older Taranis.
[2942.66] Stephen: It's got the same super low res screen and basic feature set.
[2947.3] Stephen: And the first boot you do, it's going to read the old models file,
[2951.34] Stephen: convert it to a new models file and then reboot itself.
[2955.22] Stephen: And so that first boot takes a wee bit longer and you need to be a bit patient.
[2958.58] Stephen: And then obviously it's going to give you the usual SD card warnings of, Hey, your
[2962.26] Stephen: SD card version text doesn't match the version that this firmware is.
[2966.66] Stephen: And you can go and upgrade your SD card as well.
[2968.94] Stephen: I think they've added that to the flasher.
[2970.34] Stephen: So that's a nice new feature.
[2971.78] Stephen: They've got, instead of the old companion utility, they've
[2974.42] Stephen: got a brand new flashing thing.
[2976.22] Stephen: And it flashes over DFU the same as beta flight does.
[2979.82] Stephen: So you just plug it in.
[2980.82] Stephen: You don't need to power on your radio.
[2982.7] Stephen: You plug into DFU mode and you click flash, select the, the latest release
[2988.54] Stephen: candidate from the dropdown, select your radio, click flash, and it'll slowly
[2992.74] Stephen: upgrade you and then you've got an SD card thing so you can just detach
[2996.62] Stephen: the radio plug in again, select.
[2998.42] Stephen: Yep, yep, yep, yep.
[2999.94] Stephen: Mass storage mode.
[3002.5] Stephen: And then do your SD card as well.
[3004.46] Stephen: I think you can also just pop out the SD card and it recognises if you've
[3007.58] Stephen: got it as a removable drive.
[3009.14] Stephen: So they've, they've included that and they've, they've broken
[3011.3] Stephen: out the voice packs as well.
[3012.74] Stephen: So now you've got voice packs per language.
[3014.94] Stephen: So it doesn't need to include if you're in English, they either have to
[3018.42] Stephen: wait for Hungarian and Russian and German and everything to finish.
[3023.34] Jack: Yeah, that is forever deleting that off people's SD cards.
[3027.58] Jack: And that was the worst part was, do you remember that Tony, where I
[3031.42] Jack: literally snapped your old SD card in half.
[3035.02] Jack: Because, you know, like those, those provide, the terrain is providing
[3040.38] Jack: the one gig SD cards that was just slow as balls.
[3050.82] Stephen: The radios themselves, I think, because it's running through that little
[3054.26] Stephen: arm microcontroller, it really slows down the SD card, even if it's a half
[3057.74] Stephen: decent one.
[3060.22] Curry: That makes sense.
[3060.9] Curry: Well, this is, this is something else to try.
[3062.54] Curry: It sounds fairly easy to update your radio and you can go back.
[3068.02] Stephen: Yeah, sorry.
[3068.7] Stephen: Sorry for speaking of you, Curry.
[3070.7] Curry: That's right.
[3071.14] Curry: No, I've got enough radios to try it on one and see if I like it.
[3074.9] Curry: Then we'll see if the others want to play.
[3077.06] Frank: Yeah.
[3078.7] Frank: I mean, the other thing is, while we're here, you've been
[3081.22] Frank: playing with Tracer, right?
[3084.82] Stephen: What?
[3085.34] Stephen: Yeah, yeah, yes.
[3086.34] Stephen: Some of these are still on Tracer.
[3087.7] Stephen: I think this guy over here.
[3089.94] Jack: Oh, please tell us what this guy over here is.
[3093.98] Stephen: This guy over here is a little, I quite like these little toothpick, like way
[3098.62] Stephen: too big to be a toothpick, toothpick frames.
[3100.66] Stephen: This is a four inch twig mutant frame from Racer X, and it's got a
[3108.14] Stephen: Cadex Vista in there, the original chunky Vista camera, and it's got Tracer.
[3113.34] Stephen: Does it have foldable props or something?
[3115.3] Stephen: Yeah, it's got these new Gemfan F4019 foldable props, so I can just jam it in the bag.
[3121.3] Stephen: It's a nice, it's a quad you can kind of just shove in a bag and take
[3124.7] Stephen: anywhere, and it's fairly robust.
[3126.34] Stephen: It's got like a, I think a three mil bottom plate that's really chunky, and
[3130.3] Stephen: it has almost no vibration because it's got these built-in cross braces.
[3133.62] Stephen: It's lovely little machine to fly.
[3135.62] Stephen: And it's got a beta FPV 1505, I believe 3800 K, 3600 KV, which gives
[3143.74] Stephen: it a fair bit of punch on 4S, and I run it with a 750 Marr GMB on there 4S.
[3150.3] Stephen: Fly is an absolute treat, and I've got Tracer on there, which I'll be, will be
[3155.34] Stephen: replacing, but Tracer is, it's been nice.
[3159.42] Stephen: I can't really complain about it.
[3160.9] Stephen: The only thing I complain is that it takes a lot of power and causes my
[3164.98] Stephen: tealight to potentially fry itself if I get too over enthusiastic, but I'm
[3170.54] Stephen: going to put E LRS on this eventually, but this is kind of my take anywhere
[3175.38] Stephen: ready to go quad.
[3176.26] Stephen: So I'm being careful about it, but yeah, the Tracer setup was okay.
[3181.02] Stephen: I would complain that that need to run, if you're in a Linux user, run a
[3186.22] Stephen: Windows VM is kind of a pain in the butt and the TBS software looks like
[3189.82] Stephen: something from 1995, which is, gets my goat in this day and age when, you know,
[3195.94] Stephen: iNav and Betaflight and BLHeliS and even like BlueJESC is like a one-man
[3201.34] Stephen: project.
[3201.82] Stephen: They've got excellent utilities and Tracer is just kind of a sore thumb with
[3205.98] Stephen: its crossfire style utility, but it works fine.
[3212.02] Stephen: It's just a bit expensive.
[3215.02] Stephen: It's 30 quid a pop.
[3216.22] Stephen: Those EP2s are 12 quid a pop in the UK or like a tenner if you buy a couple of
[3222.54] Stephen: them on Ali and I don't really want that on TBS software.
[3228.58] Curry: Does Tracer, in terms of its usability and range, is that quite similar to E LRS on
[3235.38] Curry: 2.4?
[3235.9] Curry: Yeah, it's a direct contender for sure.
[3238.46] Curry: They both give you approximate.
[3239.66] Stephen: You might as well not spend as much and have the cheaper things.
[3244.29] Stephen: Yeah, this is what I got to.
[3245.45] Stephen: Like I've got a selection of quads out there, but there's another one, two, three,
[3248.97] Stephen: four, five, six, seven, just under 20 on the wall over there and I was going to
[3252.53] Stephen: upgrade them and it's just, that's not going to happen.
[3256.17] Stephen: Not going to happen on Tracer.
[3257.29] Stephen: I'm not going to sink 600 quid into Tracer.
[3259.97] Stephen: I'm just not going to do it.
[3262.21] Frank: So upgrading to, well, it's been, you found it worthwhile because you obviously
[3268.65] Frank: spent some money on it anyway.
[3270.81] Frank: You've upgraded stuff, upgraded some stuff to Tracer.
[3274.61] Frank: So it was obviously worth kind of some money, but you then found Express LRS and
[3280.93] Frank: that's given you sort of the same sort of feel.
[3285.77] Stephen: There's also the one we haven't talked about, right?
[3288.09] Stephen: So if you run DJI and I do on some of them where it makes sense in a weight
[3293.37] Stephen: situation, you can also run S bus from DJI.
[3296.73] Stephen: This guy's running S bus from DJI, which means I have to use what I unfondly
[3303.09] Stephen: call the effing ugly baked potato controller from DJI, which is awkward.
[3311.37] Stephen: And takes ages to charge and you have to buy expensive DJI batteries and it just
[3316.13] Stephen: weighs a ton and doesn't have a screen on it and just annoys the hell out of me.
[3321.29] Stephen: So you can do that and you run a special implementation of S bus.
[3325.93] Stephen: So it's not S bus like you'd be familiar with from FOS guy days.
[3329.61] Stephen: It's fast S bus, which apparently is a 200 Hertz S bus, or maybe it's not 200
[3335.01] Stephen: Hertz, it's 200 kilobit or something.
[3336.61] Stephen: Anyway, they've effectively doubled either the board regular packet
[3339.09] Stephen: rate to call it fast S bus.
[3341.85] Stephen: And you can do that if you do DJI and you don't need another RX, which is nice.
[3346.17] Stephen: But at the same time, you have to use Mr.
[3348.93] Stephen: giant baked potato controller over there with terrible ergonomics.
[3353.17] Stephen: So, so this is kind of the third route, I guess, if you're already DJI.
[3357.05] Stephen: And I think that more than Tracer made me want to do E LRS because DJI
[3363.05] Stephen: seemingly has no interest at all in the community.
[3366.33] Stephen: Like you think Tracer, okay, yeah, they're not.
[3368.93] Stephen: That, you know, they've lots of hyperbole and they don't really explain
[3372.25] Stephen: what technologies inside their products.
[3374.25] Stephen: They just do kind of market texture, as we call it in the enterprise world,
[3377.49] Stephen: where you have a big, fancy diagram with lots of exclamation points on it.
[3381.61] Stephen: And everything's bombastic, but DJI, on the other hand, they're never
[3387.21] Stephen: going to make a module ever.
[3390.09] Stephen: It's just, but, but you can have a nice lightweight ish solution yet you're stuck.
[3397.21] Stephen: Um, so I think the real thing that drove me to express LRS was I don't want
[3402.65] Stephen: to spend a lot of money on my DJI quads.
[3404.69] Stephen: Can I have something that's not the DJI controller that's a regular
[3408.53] Stephen: open TX radio, which works here without adding a ton of weight or cost to the quad?
[3415.69] Stephen: Sorry, that was a bit of a rant.
[3417.25] Stephen: Apologies.
[3418.17] Frank: No, great.
[3421.17] Frank: Yeah.
[3421.57] Frank: I mean, yeah, well, that's definitely made me thinking because, you know,
[3425.49] Frank: I was saying a few weeks ago, like I've basically got everything on, uh,
[3432.77] Frank: just old FR sky at the moment.
[3435.21] Frank: Those receivers rapidly disappearing.
[3439.73] Frank: I'm not going to go to access because that's stupid.
[3444.05] Frank: Uh, I don't know what was thinking going Tracer, but maybe I will go express LRS.
[3451.21] Frank: Um, I am, but do you know, well, I mean, I've got the, uh, Brady master take 16.
[3460.25] Frank: Um, with the multi-particle module, I guess because it's all faster and lower
[3467.01] Frank: and stuff, that's not going to be a multi-particle thing.
[3469.33] Frank: That's going to be a dedicated module for express LRS.
[3472.57] Stephen: There is a PR for the, that's a five in one module and that five in one module,
[3478.53] Stephen: the five as opposed to the four and one module is everything else.
[3481.21] Stephen: The five is a 900 megahertz chip and it's an SX 1276, I believe.
[3488.01] Stephen: Right.
[3488.81] Stephen: So the SX, Cintex SX 1276 is the chip that makes all of this 900 megahertz stuff work.
[3496.25] Stephen: Right.
[3496.81] Stephen: It's used over in our nine.
[3499.09] Stephen: It's used in all the E LRS, 900 megahertz.
[3502.25] Stephen: When it goes to 2.4 gig, they use the Cintech SX 1280 is just a different
[3506.69] Stephen: frequency domain, same feature.
[3508.01] Stephen: So, um, so, so you can run that potentially.
[3512.57] Stephen: And there is a PR.
[3513.49] Stephen: If you look at the multi-particle module, there's a PR that's been waiting since
[3517.21] Stephen: may that says we want to add express LRS to the five and one module, but they're
[3522.25] Stephen: waiting for it to hit one zero.
[3523.89] Stephen: So you may get lucky.
[3524.97] Stephen: And if you're happy to run 900 megahertz equipment, you might find that support
[3528.61] Stephen: lands soon on the other hand, you have a module bay and the happy model.
[3533.41] Stephen: Um, ES 24 TX is only 30 quid.
[3537.57] Stephen: So you could just spend 30 quid and kick the tires with the 2.4 gig stuff as well.
[3543.53] Frank: Not a bad idea, is it?
[3546.13] Frank: It looks nice.
[3547.89] Frank: It's out of stock at unmanned tech.
[3550.01] Frank: If anyone in the chat knows where it's in stock, let me know.
[3553.33] Stephen: I picked up one for my man tech a while back.
[3555.65] Stephen: Um, they will have more stock in there.
[3557.49] Stephen: Definitely still producing them.
[3559.17] Stephen: Or you can always just go to the discord and like people in the UK.
[3562.81] Stephen: Um, I got one from fail safe FPV for the tea light.
[3566.57] Stephen: And, uh, I'd say great customer service.
[3569.29] Stephen: Great guy.
[3570.05] Stephen: Um, it's made me an internal tea light one as well.
[3573.61] Stephen: So I'm actually going to put it inside the tea light casing this time and, and
[3577.85] Stephen: make it just a complete stealth build, if you will.
[3580.97] Stephen: So it's going to have the four and one and also express LRS all inside the radio.
[3586.49] Frank: Richard Boric reckons hobby RC.
[3589.53] Frank: I will, I will have a look.
[3593.61] Curry: It's nice and cheap.
[3598.12] Curry: It certainly seems to have no downsides currently.
[3600.16] Curry: Wow.
[3601.88] Curry: It sounds like we should try it.
[3603.48] Stephen: If you're someone, the only downside is if you're totally scared and you want
[3607.64] Stephen: customer service and tons of documentation, but everyone's been super friendly.
[3613.64] Stephen: Uh, go on their discord server and ask.
[3615.6] Stephen: And there's just legions of people ready to help you.
[3618.16] Stephen: It's really been a great experience.
[3619.72] Stephen: I have to say.
[3621.6] Stephen: Hmm.
[3622.88] Frank: Very good.
[3624.92] Frank: Is Jack returning?
[3626.12] Frank: Do we know?
[3627.76] Jack: So probably very interesting Chad gentleman.
[3637.52] Jack: He seemed to have adopted Frank from our ranks.
[3642.68] Jack: Um, I've got my buddy Chris.
[3645.8] Jack: He might, he might know some modules and stuff.
[3648.96] Jack: He's been running the open LRS.
[3653.16] Jack: So maybe we could have a chat with him.
[3655.4] Jack: It's not open LRS.
[3657.16] Stephen: Express LRS, open LRS was this ancient system, which I think might have some
[3665.72] Stephen: link, but no real tangible link to the project.
[3668.48] Jack: No, it's not.
[3672.88] Frank: Okay.
[3674.08] Frank: Well, before we sign off, I just want to say thank you to a few people who have
[3681.4] Frank: expressed some interest in LDO.
[3684.12] Frank: No, uh, we haven't worked out where, what, when, how, but there has been some
[3690.6] Frank: interest, um, Ben Scarborough and who else did we have saying, uh, Bajarasi who I did
[3701.24] Frank: see in the chat earlier, um, both sort of reached out and I think someone else as
[3706.32] Frank: well, uh, said they're interested in, in having a meetup, uh, somewhere at some
[3711.88] Frank: point. So, uh, let me know if anyone else is interested, um, the more people that
[3719.24] Frank: there are interested, the more likely I am to do something.
[3722.16] Frank: So yeah, drop, drop us an email.
[3727.52] Frank: Let's join out at gmail.com.
[3729.64] Frank: Messages on Instagram at let's turn out.
[3732.56] Frank: Send us a message on Facebook again, facebook.com slash let's turn out or drop
[3738.08] Frank: a comment after the show, uh, on, on one of the YouTube things.
[3743.76] Frank: Uh, let us know.
[3745.68] Frank: Uh, yeah, just stick as a thing, not on the stream so that it exists permanently
[3751.44] Frank: and they're far more likely to see it.
[3753.6] Frank: Um, but yeah, we'll, we'll maybe try and sort something out.
[3759.78] Jack: Thank you.
[3760.42] Jack: You've been listening to lecture drone out a massive thank you to all our
[3764.86] Jack: patrons and everyone who tunes in and watches and listens to us.
[3770.02] Jack: Does the banner work this week?
[3771.94] Jack: Frank, let's find out.
[3775.86] Jack: Or do we have to message, does it, will it work?
[3779.7] Jack: Will it go all the way?
[3781.78] Jack: Anyway, tonight you've been joined by, uh, Lord of master, head of LDO.
[3787.94] Jack: No.
[3788.58] Jack: Andrew says Frank, bye.
[3791.3] Jack: Everyone's favorite little munchkin.
[3795.42] Jack: Bonjour.
[3796.86] Jack: No, you knew it was everyone's favorite.
[3800.02] Jack: Currie kitten.
[3801.82] Jack: Goodbye.
[3803.14] Jack: And I'm sorry.
[3804.66] Jack: I confused open LRS with express LRS.
[3810.66] Stephen: Thank you so much guys.
[3812.98] Jack: And I will look out for you in the chat.
[3815.82] Jack: Were you shouting at us when we don't know anything, but you are very
[3819.3] Jack: welcome to come back on an interview.
[3820.66] Jack: Like, and I've been bright until I fly.
[3823.42] Jack: Thank you.
[3823.9] Jack: Good night.
[3824.98] Curry: Bye.
[3826.22] Curry: Bye.
[3827.54] Curry: Telemetry loss.