=== Let's Drone Out — Episode 314 ===
Title: LDO 314 - Express Painless
Recorded: 2021-09-02
Hosts: Stephen "Belrik" Howell, Wayne "CurryKitten" Andrews, Jack "Brightontillifly" Nash, Andrew "Frank" Hyams
Guest(s): Lee "Painless360" Schofield
Total audience: 2,472
Platforms: YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Fcypc31tvg); SoundCloud (http://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/feeds.soundcloud.com/stream/1118302351-letsdroneout-ldo-314-express-painless.mp3)
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Tonight guest a show favourite painless 360! 
https://www.youtube.com/user/Painless360

Chatting about things released updates and news.

[0.0] Jack: Hello and you're listening to what's drawn out and special thank you to our lovely patrons that help donate so that we can pay the editor to remove the swear words and silly things we say massive thank you to kolos campos art folk now sam dama.
[19.2] Jack: I can't read on with the show let's draw now hello and welcome back to another exciting episode of lecture now tonight we are joined by everyone's favorites all is our squeaky knee or is it just the door curry kitten hello.
[69.34] Jack: The man behind the mustache steven alright hello and everyone's favorite youtube to figure out problems with their nays 32 painless 360 a high job and i'm bright until i fly hello and welcome back to the show we got no frank unfortunately he's attending a family funeral sorry for your lost buddy i hope you're doing okay he might be back to join us.
[99.54] Jack: So frank suddenly appears we have been blessed with his company so i have been chatting to obviously my buddy painless every now and again we'd like to check in on one of each other mainly painless ringing me because i'm asleep most of the time.
[123.82] Jack: steven your dinner's ready.
[125.18] Stephen: Yeah i'm on a podcast right now.
[130.42] Stephen: And for my other half i have indeed fed fed our poor wasting away ever hungry cats who have probably been trying to con the second dinner out for.
[139.98] Jack: yeah.
[142.9] Jack: But it's so we haven't seen your cat for a while man.
[147.62] Stephen: they're shy until you get the can opener out that's the thing it's all covered love with those two.
[154.14] Jack: bless.
[155.62] Jack: Your little fur babies making sure they don't waste away.
[160.34] Stephen: All the opposite, which is more likely.
[164.58] Jack: How have you been painless what have you been up to.
[168.5] Lee: Quite a bit actually it seems to have been a little bit of a busy period, I mean the way it works here is that.
[175.94] Lee: Before the world exploded most of August i'd spend in the summer holidays traveling with mrs painless it has been a teacher can you know we can kind of get a serious time away obviously that hasn't happened for two years.
[190.46] Lee: But I lived in hope, so the way it works is that in June and July I create lots of extra content so you know if I have a flash of inspiration or get a great question or good product or whatever and i'll do the video and then kind of if it's not time sensitive.
[204.34] Lee: I kind of stick it away in the queue and it comes out through the whole of August and it's always fun because that always happens and people just assume that.
[214.54] Lee: Because they're they always come out at six o'clock in the morning if you've ever spotted it if you ever kind of sat there bored but people assume that i'm sat there, you know I set me along for quarter to six.
[225.38] Lee: And i'm sat there waiting for on the publish button and when soon as it goes right publish and you just schedule that right so i'm just coming to the end of it, but they had loads of new stuff in and coming into the start of this month, I was thinking.
[238.98] Lee: i haven't got a lot to talk about in September and then suddenly I mean you probably found this as as well Wayne is that you get these kind of.
[246.82] Lee: It dips and right, you know you think that nobody's talking to you about anything and then suddenly you have like four or five contacts get in touch for you saying oh this this or that thing we'd like you to have a look at.
[258.22] Lee: And it's been like that it's been crazy I mean behind me over doing that thing where it's not mirror image there's a there's a there's a quad on the table that's out in a couple of weeks, which is really unusual there's a big one the half meter for like wingspan.
[271.74] Lee: plane from item RC the videos on the thing tomorrow that's been fun to build, although transporting it's going to be a bit interesting with my little car but anyway.
[283.66] Lee: And then, obviously, the big thing which I know Steve and I will have a chat about is buggering about with express LRS now we have real radio on the product release, which I think curry kittens also involved in.
[297.7] Stephen: Well, yeah product and then you review it and then you fix it for the manufacturer and you review it again explain how you fixed it.
[305.46] Lee: Or you get the product in you start playing with it, you realize that it's not as complete as it should be and then you kind of stop all the production of videos on that product until you can be confident that you're not.
[320.78] Lee: drawing people towards a product that is fundamentally flawed leave a constant professional there it's impressive I well, the thing is i'd rather make a video when i've got it all fit, which is why there's been no extra videos about the beta FPV stuff after the way we've got real hardware, you know, and because since then I still haven't yet managed to make it all work.
[346.74] Stephen: Do you feel that you're kind of in the same place as maybe the FrSky general team were when someone like ran out of their lab, the first time they got like D8 or D16 working and went hey, this is working it's amazing try it.
[360.7] Stephen: Except this time you actually they've actually shipped you the product and it's just come out of the lab and it's just ready and it's still going through the testing and revisions and QA.
[370.1] Lee: I think it's more.
[373.1] Lee: complicated than that in that at least free sky had control of the software and the hardware and they could test it in the lab before they shipped out the door so although although I think you know there were instances in the early days where the you know the ink wasn't even dry on the manual before they started packing it in boxes and shipping it.
[390.46] Stephen: I think the challenge with the LRS and you know interest to see what you guys think is that the project and the code is pretty good now you know it's had there's been lots and lots and lots of tests I've bought a DIY transmitter and mine worked out the box so I'm really confused when these huge manufacturers take something that's a DIY product that someone's made in their bedroom in the UK here and they ship to me and it works perfectly and they copy it and they managed to not perfectly copy it.
[416.86] Lee: Well then that's the issue though isn't it? They're not copying it and I spoke to one of the developers at length who was brilliant actually. He also happens to be one of my Patreons so when I kind of because on my feed on the Patreon thing I was just explaining how with that particular week everything I touched turned to crap. You know when you have one of those weeks where literally you know you're afraid to go to the toilet in case it comes off in your hand because literally everything you touch breaks.
[445.1] Lee: You're trying to put milk in your cereal and you've just dropped it and there's glass everywhere.
[448.3] Lee: That's it you know yeah you end up with a fork in your eyes just like it's one of those weeks and anyway part of it everything's on fire yeah it's yeah and the fire extinguisher you pick up to it's full of you know gasoline it's that kind of week and the E LRS system was part of that and he very kindly said I'll jump on Skype with you and help you troubleshoot it and God bless him he took two hours out of his life that he's never getting back
[474.06] Lee: and we we were actually doing things like short circuiting some pins on some of the chips to ground
[479.98] Lee: to try and make it work and it really got into we started with the let's try the easy stuff first
[485.18] Lee: and at the end of the two hours we were way past my knowledge level and we were we were
[492.3] Lee: it wasn't we were in the weeds we dug up the garden and we would hit like we were at bedrock
[496.94] Stephen: yeah and it was just this is what did you get to in the end what was the the final breakthrough
[502.62] Lee: that you got out of that well it what it turned out to be is that i'm using the beta fpv all in
[511.26] Lee: one flight controller that has the the receive actually on the flight controller itself and
[516.78] Lee: use the beta flight pass through so so the way if you if you're listening to this still you are
[522.14] Stephen: connected but it's just on the same PCB right it's not an SPI one is it or is it the SPI one
[526.86] Lee: no it's you are connected but there's a but we found the wrinkle but well he did because
[532.14] Lee: he kind of went away and just went doesn't make sense so um just to kind of explain if anyone's
[537.5] Lee: listening to this and don't know what express LRS is it's this open source uh non-proprietary
[542.94] Lee: anyone can make it uh project so it's an amazing idea that anyone can just come along and everyone
[548.38] Lee: started you know it's it's not a new project by instructing the imagination version one's been
[552.94] Lee: out a couple of weeks but a couple of manufacturers have made custom hardware for it for the first
[557.5] Lee: time and uh it's fair to say that all that's caveat caveat caveat all of the custom hardware
[564.86] Lee: that i've heard about has little tweaks but this this turn while it turned out to be believe i'm
[569.58] Lee: not steven it was actually um because it is talking from the receiver to the flight controller
[576.22] Lee: over cr crsf that's right isn't it yeah uh which interestingly i spoke to trappy about
[583.9] Lee: because when i saw that they were using crsf i was like oh that's that's really smart um
[589.34] Lee: bidirectional protocol blah blah blah you know it's pretty bulletproof you know for a while it
[593.18] Lee: just works right exactly so so i kind of went to trappy thinking oh they licensed that right
[598.7] Lee: because because you know trappy tends to get a little bit uh touching orientations in beta
[604.14] Lee: flight and open tx as far as i know yeah they're just kind of they're just kind of figured it out
[609.74] Lee: and made it work and and uh speaking to trappy he was he's actually quite chilled about that and
[614.3] Lee: just went yeah they've realized that it's it's the logical choice but um but the way it works is that
[619.9] Lee: when you do the beta flight pass through to flash it and to talk to it yeah you you basically then
[625.1] Lee: just use the um to use the beta flight pass through command to go over the uart to the receiver
[633.42] Lee: but that only works if you've got telemetry turned off in the telemetry issue i remember
[639.9] Lee: hearing about that yeah yeah so so that's that's actually what it was so that's how long you get
[645.26] Lee: so um so we tried every like i said hard you know we actually had a um what do you call it like a
[652.46] Lee: a piece of wire and i was kind of trying to short circuit to force the boot and all this kind of
[657.74] Lee: stuff yeah no no it wasn't it was nowhere that fancy it was uh what do you call the paper clip
[663.58] Lee: all right paper clip right there yeah we were getting really you know like lips as it is
[668.38] Lee: good old paper clips um and and it's things like that that i was like oh come on i expected this
[675.58] Lee: to be you know ba dum ba dum ba dum ba dum but checking with them it appears that what's been
[680.86] Lee: happening is that there's a hardware spec for e lrs that's been given to the hardware vendors
[686.06] Lee: and no and it's up to the hardware vendors to check whether or not the software works
[693.42] Lee: okay um and the missing that's it ship it yeah and i've spoken to some of the vendors who i trust
[701.74] Lee: who i know would make a quality module that probably would be a little bit more expensive
[707.02] Lee: than the ones that we've already had um and everyone i spoke to has just said i'm not touching
[711.66] Lee: that with a bargepole because the people have produced them have gone for the lowest common
[715.02] Stephen: denominator in terms of price the super cheapo happy model one that's in there i've put it in
[719.98] Stephen: a radio master box that one has worked an absolute treat the only reason it's open now is because
[726.62] Stephen: you may have observed this is not an open tx radio so i've actually been doing some debugging
[732.62] Stephen: myself just before running down the pub prior to this um i was working with an e lrs developer on
[738.62] Stephen: a pr because they said they'd fixed all the lure code for non express lrs lure scripts so you can
[745.98] Stephen: use okay tbs agent light the tbs crossfire scripts and you can also use it with a crossfire
[752.62] Stephen: implementation on deviation tx i saw lurgy was using one of these one where you were flying last
[757.82] Stephen: at ldo no so there's plenty of people out there still have these which is it was they're not
[762.78] Stephen: bad little radios they're not bad it did 101 different protocols got your built-in multi
[768.06] Stephen: protocol module and it accepts crossfire it doesn't do ghost it doesn't do all these fancy
[773.98] Stephen: modern protocols but it does do crsf and crsf can render the menus from express lrs so you
[780.54] Stephen: can plug this in and you don't need a new lure script it's all built into the firmware there's
[784.7] Stephen: no you can't even add scripts it's all compiled in but because they've compiled crsf support
[790.06] Stephen: they've the guys that express lrs are making the v2 of express lrs which is due out in a short while
[796.86] Stephen: work with these ancient radios where crossfire support was available and we were trying to
[800.78] Stephen: figure out why it has suddenly stopped working it turned out they'd added in the module names
[806.22] Stephen: and they put they previously called it hm es 2 4 tx nice short version yes more verbose they made
[814.78] Stephen: it happy model es 24 tx and it turned out there was a 12 character limitation on these old radios
[820.94] Stephen: for all of the fields and it was just refusing to render any of the menus since they increased the
[826.06] Stephen: so we had to like binary search the field length and i compiled umpteen things and set it up with
[832.14] Stephen: a little debug uart and yeah 12 characters is what we came out with so that's going to be fixed soon
[838.14] Curry: i hope it strikes me that um the problem is it's like when you have a product it should be an
[846.14] Curry: ongoing concern so it's like these people put them together cheapest chips did we get to flash
[851.82] Curry: that yeah seems all right go instead of like there should be an ongoing testing phase it's
[856.38] Curry: like new firmware has been released can we just check that on our modules and that's your
[859.5] Curry: functional testing but yeah in software you have like a system test where you're trying to create
[866.46] Curry: really complex scenarios or stresses that are going to try and break the module and you need
[870.54] Curry: to make sure it gets through all of these but that's not happening so it's like yeah this this
[874.46] Curry: module may have worked originally but no one bothered testing it afterwards so then it's up
[879.1] Curry: to the users to try and find it out and um like when i called you uh lee about that yeah thank you
[885.58] Curry: beat your fbv module i said this this this took me ages and i then i went on to the no module which
[891.42] Curry: i still can't say thought this would be easy that was even harder that took me even longer to fathom
[895.66] Curry: out so god knows what this one could be i don't say that because i've got one of them on the way
[900.22] Stephen: look at the traditional companies who are making modules you've got immersion rc tbs uh fr sky
[906.14] Stephen: these are all big houses that do that continued product support and the people that are coming
[910.3] Stephen: on board for the lrs stuff these are the type of guys that would build flight controllers ship them
[915.34] Stephen: and never support them again so for them that i think it's just a new way of working it's brand
[920.7] Lee: new and it's a bit of a shock to them i think we've got a period where all this is going to get
[925.58] Lee: worked out over time because i i think i feel sorry at the moment for the es elrs developers
[932.06] Lee: because they've done everything that they can in the code to try and make this kind of work
[936.78] Lee: and then you know the the pandora's box has been opened and it's that it's a lot of hardware issues
[944.22] Lee: that are causing because although you know us and hopefully the people listening to the podcast
[949.02] Lee: you know i've kind of been a lot been around in the hobby long enough to know that actually what
[953.74] Lee: we're talking about here is a fantastic idea and a good set of version one code with
[963.02] Lee: challenging integration with the hardware that's the custom made hardware that's out there
[967.66] Lee: and then in six months from now we'll probably look back at this and it'll you know we'll probably
[971.34] Lee: laugh at how difficult it was because all these things are going to get worked out right but it
[975.58] Lee: but you know but it just if you look at you know the comparison you use with people like
[981.74] Lee: anthony and immersion rc and trapea tps the cool thing that those guys have got is that they're
[987.18] Lee: in control of all parts of the ecosystem they have the hardware they have the software like
[992.06] Lee: wane says they can go in the lab they can try and flash it they can get the old version one of the
[997.02] Lee: module that they've still got and try and see whether that works and then go and only release
[1001.02] Stephen: the code when it gets where's a lot of these others are just factories really and then you
[1005.66] Stephen: know you see a few videos of happy model flying off their building but for the most part these
[1010.3] Stephen: are large-scale factory operations are not driven by pilots and software developers no i think
[1016.38] Stephen: absolutely right and and you've been in sorry just a quick point you've been in the business
[1020.94] Stephen: a while ago and one thing that instantly is called back to mind is pascal and his reverse
[1026.46] Stephen: engineering of d8 and you know can you remember back to the times when d8 was first cloned and
[1032.06] Stephen: the quality of modules you were seeing in those first multi-protocol modules because i think
[1036.7] Stephen: that's more more of an accurate comparison not comparing against ghost or tracer but comparing
[1042.94] Stephen: against the first d8 clones because that's basically what we're looking at here i i think
[1047.9] Lee: it's a closer analogy i think you're right steve and i think that it's it's definitely
[1052.86] Lee: more akin to what we're seeing now it's just i i just hope that the hardware of the interfaces
[1058.7] Lee: and the testing schedules get bottomed out a little bit more because it's it's ultimately
[1063.82] Lee: going to affect the elrs project and people's confidence in it because i don't think everyone's
[1069.98] Lee: going to you know if they buy a module and it doesn't flash or it doesn't bind or it lets go
[1075.26] Lee: halfway through a flight and crushes their model you know are they going to go oh the hardware's
[1080.06] Lee: let it down uh you know that the the the project gets tarred with the same brush and that's the
[1084.86] Lee: issue because actually the project is is a bloody great idea i love the idea that i i can't well
[1091.02] Lee: there's less chance of me ending up like i am now with loads of a double cst version one free sky
[1097.34] Lee: stuff uh that i love by the way that's never ever touch wood there's never ever failed on me
[1102.46] Lee: in the hobby too yeah and uh and i can't buy it anymore uh and when it all you know i've still
[1107.9] Lee: got loads of x8 on our receivers my torama still talks it my uh radio master still talks it i'm not
[1114.38] Lee: going to go to v2 i'm not going to go to all the new fr sky stuff because i'm already kind of
[1120.7] Lee: invested if i'm going to go to something else actually elrs sounds like the better way to do
[1125.66] Stephen: it because then you've seen the htlrc parts yet because i've seen them appear in the repo and
[1130.14] Stephen: people talking about them that's the one vendor that i haven't seen in reviews yet i haven't seen
[1135.02] Lee: them in the flesh you know uh that htlrc tend to be pretty good actually in terms of the quality of
[1140.86] Lee: the stuff that i've had out of them they don't tend to be quite a slip shot as some of the
[1145.66] Lee: vendors that we tend to get stuff from a bit more robust i've had a few good issues for one
[1151.1] Lee: but it but it really depends on it it likes as we've just talked about it's not how well they
[1156.54] Lee: design the pcb and the hardware and follow the specs because the other thing to speak to the devs
[1160.94] Lee: is that the hardware specs for the radios aren't kind of you know uh super duper hundred percent
[1166.14] Lee: realized it's a guide so you can implement around that guide and i think that's been part of the
[1172.06] Lee: problem um and the other crazy thing by the sound of it is that the way it's set up between the
[1177.74] Lee: project and the hardware people is that the hardware people are guys actually make the money
[1182.7] Lee: right because they they put they build the modules the modules are bought people there's
[1187.42] Stephen: a profit you know made out those modules you say there's not a strict spec there is um if you look
[1193.58] Stephen: on github express lrs has two repos it's got one for the software and one for the hardware so there
[1198.94] Stephen: is there's the stl files for all the pcb's and layout diagrams and full bill of materials with
[1205.98] Stephen: all the components but these guys are often taking something and they're like well to differentiate
[1211.26] Stephen: ourselves we need to do one watt or we need a fan or we need RGB LEDs and and so they then tack
[1218.54] Stephen: these extra things on to try and make theirs unique and that maybe complicates things a little
[1223.5] Stephen: bit more than just producing a bog standard 250 milliwatt probably good enough diy module which
[1230.86] Lee: which actually is what we need right now that just works that flashes that binds you know because i
[1235.74] Lee: was having issues with things like um when you set the passphrase some things would work when you
[1241.98] Lee: set the passphrase some things wouldn't it's just and it i just i want to get some technology in
[1249.26] Lee: here and then when i've got it all working then i'll make a video on what is express lrs how you
[1254.94] Lee: set it up because at the moment all i've been making videos is just you know just kind of gently
[1260.38] Lee: weeping into the microphone um and i don't want to do that because actually the project
[1266.62] Lee: i i have a massive amount of love for the project i think it's an amazing idea i don't want to at
[1271.74] Lee: the moment um kind of go off half cocked because a lot of the things that i'm finding out
[1278.3] Lee: the issues that that i'm having is not really related to the e lrs code it's either the
[1284.46] Lee: mr capacitor on the on the um hardware and jack or it's thing it's that wacky stuff like you know
[1292.86] Lee: the bloody telemetry turned on in beta flight which means it it won't work um but but it's just
[1299.34] Lee: you know it's it's frustrating because you want to get it and you just when i plug it in do your
[1303.74] Lee: update on the receiver do your update on the tx module plug it in setups the rsf put the bluer
[1310.22] Lee: script on and bingo you're flying and here i am how many four weeks later i i went for the
[1316.86] Curry: opposite idea so i was like i'm having problems with this therefore other people might here is
[1321.34] Curry: here is the watson all of me trying to get through it because i figured other people would be doing
[1325.18] Curry: the same but yeah sadly that sort of thing may well put people off looking at some of the comments
[1331.1] Curry: in there there's people you can just imagine watching the screen running in fear waving their
[1336.7] Curry: arms saying no i'm gonna stick with crossfire or i'm gonna stick with ghost or whatever because
[1341.18] Stephen: you've really got gross ghost that's not pressing i think it's really trying to appeal to the people
[1346.06] Stephen: who haven't got a pile of cash who are still running d16 and just want to move up something
[1351.66] Stephen: that's gonna treat them better than d16 where they're not fail-saving all over the place
[1356.94] Curry: yeah yeah although for people with um a big fleet equipping like you know 10 or 20 crossfire
[1364.62] Curry: receivers is is pretty expensive and it would be nice to have a cheaper alternative so i get that
[1369.5] Curry: point of view but at the moment it's still it still can be quite tricky it seems to me that
[1375.02] Curry: the people that went with happy model have have had better experiences because it's generally
[1380.3] Curry: worked out of the box i would hope as you said lee hdlrc tend to be pretty good at what they
[1386.46] Curry: produce so fingers crossed for those guys because if it works it's pretty easy but i just haven't
[1393.5] Curry: had the experience of it all working yet at least on the modules the receiver stuff's always
[1397.42] Curry: been pretty good it's like get receiver plug it in wait 20 seconds the flicky light comes on
[1403.02] Curry: i join the wi-fi i plump my firmware over and it's all good i don't have to bind anymore that's
[1408.22] Lee: that's awesome yeah i'm with you at the moment i haven't yet had everything working um the thing
[1416.43] Lee: is you know going back to your point it's great making i think there's an awful lot of stuff in
[1421.55] Lee: the forums and videos around showing the problems uh you know i i don't think i can add anything to
[1428.27] Lee: that with another video about it uh you know because that content is out there i just i'd
[1433.79] Lee: love to make a video saying this is this is how you do it and these the pitfalls the problem is
[1438.83] Stephen: showing head tracker integration because they're just introduced the six or seven bit channels for
[1443.79] Lee: hedger yeah i mean i think i'd love to do a video that just talks about the fact that you know
[1449.47] Lee: until recently it was only the four full resolution channels and then arming was on channel five and
[1454.51] Lee: then explain what it is but it's like i don't really want to do that because right now if people
[1459.23] Lee: then rush out and go and buy a piece of hardware and they have the same experience as i had
[1464.03] Lee: you know then um i'll get a crappy um message saying you know yeah i've just wasted 80 quid
[1469.63] Lee: i'm never getting back but it um i i just want i just want this to work i just love the idea that
[1477.31] Lee: if if i can't get my favorite receiver from a happy model i can go and get it from btrf pv
[1482.91] Lee: or i can get it from the guy making them on ebay because in theory it should also i just think what
[1488.43] Stephen: it's the same idea right if you blow up your your fc then you can just go get another one
[1493.79] Stephen: if it works with beta flight your config you can copy over you know your pits are going to be the
[1497.71] Lee: same off you go yeah it it it will be it'll be yeah i'm i'm confident that all this stuff will
[1504.75] Lee: get worked out but i uh but to go back to the point i was making around the hardware the hardware
[1509.71] Lee: guys the guys that are selling it and making the money off the sale of the hardware um from the
[1515.15] Lee: developer that i was speaking to he didn't think there was any commercial relationship kicking
[1519.07] Lee: anything back to the project do you know if that's still that's the case stephen when i last spoke
[1525.31] Stephen: to people about this they said that they they didn't want that they just wanted to make the
[1529.79] Stephen: situation better for people on the ground or you know so they can fly their models that was pretty
[1535.23] Lee: much motivation that was the that was the answer that i got and with all respect to the developers
[1540.11] Lee: i think eve because at the moment why it's exciting and fun and the developers are having a lot of it
[1545.55] Lee: but eventually the project gets the point where it becomes really boring there's maintenance
[1550.51] Lee: updates documentation code maintenance you mean yeah like beta flight right and then and then and
[1556.67] Lee: then you've got all that donkey work and that's really boring none the devs want to do that you
[1561.23] Lee: need to basically pay some poor bugger to sit in an office to actually do their own code contributions
[1568.11] Stephen: for their receivers they may have messed a capacitor on the board but you know there were
[1572.27] Stephen: pull requests coming and they could review and and that seemed to work um i think it the danger is
[1579.07] Stephen: we've got like veal heli s versus veal heli 32 right where they tried to make a bit of coin off
[1584.51] Stephen: veal heli 32 and the result was that when you get a new uh esc with veal heli 32 if it's brand
[1591.71] Stephen: new you have to wait for them to add support for a while and support is kind of on a per board
[1597.95] Stephen: basis it doesn't just work when you you get a new bill heli s esc it just works like it's
[1602.91] Stephen: an open standard everyone can cover you wherever it's getting done veal heli 32 because they need
[1607.79] Stephen: money for it that you've got to wait for them to actually add your id to the list and support
[1614.11] Stephen: your specific board and and that was that's worse for consumers because you buy a new esc and
[1621.47] Stephen: if it's got a problem you can't upload a new firmware to it you've got to wait for them to
[1625.79] Stephen: kind of tick through it as if it's an open standard you can just go oh yeah mine's just
[1630.99] Stephen: like this other one i'll use the omnibus f4 or whatever like you would in beta flight you know
[1635.87] Lee: generic settings and off you go so so i i'm i'm hoping that um that the how do you say that
[1644.91] Lee: radio wane that you've got the module the nimino i still struggle with it the mino uh
[1655.55] Lee: hopefully when i get that one in it's going to be because because speaking to the devs that seems
[1660.19] Lee: to be one of the manufacturers that work the closest with the software team uh which is the
[1665.23] Lee: reason that i've gone for it as my next attempt because i've put a lot in that discord that yeah
[1673.15] Stephen: i can only assume if you're a native chinese speaker it just rolls off the tongue it's quite
[1677.71] Curry: confusing to an english speaker doesn't for me see how many takes you do on your video when you're
[1682.11] Lee: trying to say it i've got this it might be an outtake at the end of all the different attempts
[1691.87] Lee: um or i'll just call it you know dave or something but it's like a flash aren't they
[1698.51] Lee: yeah the the fact they've been talking to the software guys is it makes me feel that there's
[1704.11] Lee: been an attempt a continued attempt to try and make this as seamless as possible and that
[1709.87] Lee: that can only be a good thing right so it's frightening it's encouraging they really need
[1715.23] Curry: to include some documentation than the nimino people because they included absolutely nothing
[1722.03] Curry: and until i talked to the discord devs i didn't even understand how the wi-fi module worked i
[1727.23] Curry: just assumed it did the thing that everything else did which was create a wi-fi point not like oh
[1732.75] Curry: yeah you have to you have to go into it and log it into your home network and then you can just
[1737.55] Curry: join in and put it over that way it's completely different but um if they don't write anything down
[1743.79] Curry: then it makes it quite hard for the consumer to to figure it out well something i did spot having
[1748.75] Stephen: just flashed this uh happy model to to master is the ble joystick is now in master and enabled
[1756.27] Stephen: via the menus so if you're playing a sim and you have one of these in here with the esp32 module
[1764.59] Stephen: that can work as a bluetooth joystick now so you can just hit uh an item in your crossfire menu
[1770.91] Stephen: and turn on bluetooth mode and it appears as a joystick and you pair it with your pc and play
[1774.83] Stephen: sims you don't need one of those but or don't need to plug in a flight controller to usb or
[1779.95] Stephen: get one of these xsr sim dongles from fr sky or things like that it's all built onto the radio
[1786.91] Lee: you see that's the kind of stuff we want that's really cool that get it's getting us one step
[1792.75] Lee: away from all this proprietary craziness that we've had you know with some of the protocols and then
[1799.23] Lee: you know there's all there's all the fighting on the flight line about whose protocol is better
[1803.23] Lee: and then you know everyone hates all the spectrum guys and then and then you get to the point where
[1807.55] Lee: then most of those that protocols are retired anyway it's uh it's just to be nice to have one
[1812.51] Lee: that you know when you get your new bind and fly model you know you can get it as elrs and pretty
[1818.35] Lee: much everything talks the lrs and then if you want to be a bit exotic and you know d16 it or
[1824.91] Lee: tracer it or crossfire then you can buy the module that sounds lovely to me this episode
[1830.67] Frank: was recorded in front of a live online audience downloaded and edited to make sense when it played
[1835.63] Frank: audio only censored to please the itunes people hosted on the internet forwarded through to your
[1840.35] Frank: podcast provider downloaded playing on your device and is now playing in your ears all thanks to our
[1846.27] Frank: patreons consider joining them and you'll also get other online benefits find out more at patreon.com
[1852.91] Lee: forward slash let's drone out is anything else that we need because that because we've done
[1857.71] Lee: nearly half an hour on elrs yeah what's been going on the rest of the world there must have
[1862.59] Lee: been some bits and pieces you wanted to talk about iNav didn't you jack yes i'm wondering
[1868.19] Jack: how you're getting on with iNav3 uh because i have not i've not been brave enough to flash
[1874.59] Lee: anything yet put up has everyone else tried it wow hands up hands up if you like iNav3
[1888.36] Curry: i haven't got much of a comparison i used it on my great big horrible f450 quad and it came home
[1893.88] Curry: and it position held but it did do this a lot but that's that's a different thing but yeah i
[1899.4] Curry: really haven't used iNav much in the past to see any great difference between them
[1905.48] Lee: from my point of view i think a lot of the new stuff is predominantly around things like fixed
[1911.24] Lee: wing i think it was it was i mean there's a massive amount of changes in iNav3 but as a
[1916.28] Lee: as a fixed wing wing pilot iNav3.0 is so much easier than all the buggering about you had to
[1923.24] Lee: do with iNav2.61 a lot of it is around uh how things like leveling and auto tune works
[1931.08] Lee: um so the way it used to be is that uh you know that a fixed wing model actually flies slightly
[1937.56] Lee: nose up typically there's an angle of incidence to maintain uh the altitude you know the altitude
[1944.52] Lee: at cruise speed and normally the board is flat so usually the nose is up four or five degrees
[1950.84] Lee: so you had to you had to guess that and you had to put the offset in iNav and then fly it and
[1957.32] Lee: then cruise around in a self-level mode if you want to do and then see if it was sinking or rising
[1962.68] Lee: and then you go back and then you change it again and then you fly it again yeah um so there was
[1968.2] Lee: that thing and now you can there's there's a new feature that i actually asked for i put you know
[1973.72] Lee: claim to fame is where when you're flying in an auto level mode it kind of figures out where the
[1979.72] Lee: controls need to be and goes all right okay got it so when you click into manual you know i turn
[1985.64] Lee: all the help off with iNav the the the controls are all trimmed automatically for you now that's
[1992.6] Lee: not new because rduplane has had that for donkey's years which is why i asked for it in iNav and the
[1997.96] Lee: other thing it does as well you've got this uh a flight mode called auto level you can guess what
[2003.8] Lee: it does right and the idea is is that you fly in a stabilized mode and you turn on auto level
[2010.36] Lee: and then it figures out what that offset the board offset needs to be in order to maintain
[2016.52] Stephen: right the altitude and then kind of sets that that manual mode is it strictly manual or is it
[2024.12] Lee: a heading hold acro type of mode no all it's doing is is basically setting the servo position
[2031.32] Lee: so that when you go into manual mode it's set to maintain straight level flight so you know the
[2035.64] Lee: trimming on the radio that you'd normally do and then you kind of come back and you kind of take
[2039.8] Lee: that out it kind of sets that all for you there was an old mode called servo auto trim that you
[2045.0] Lee: had to manually do it um so you would fly straight and level for two seconds with servo auto trim on
[2051.8] Lee: and then you turn it off and that would figure it out and set it as the mean of what the controls
[2057.88] Lee: had been that you were holding them at uh this one because then you have to i remember doing
[2063.08] Curry: it now on a plane because you had to put it in auto trim mode and then you'd have to basically
[2067.72] Curry: hold your sticks in a way that the plane was level and then you take it off and if that was okay
[2073.0] Curry: i can't remember the order you had to come and land it and then turn it off or something and
[2077.88] Curry: that would save your positions but i can't remember it so i have to keep looking up on my phone
[2081.8] Curry: but you're saying you can just flick it into like auto level mode and it will just
[2085.64] Curry: figure it out and then the next time you go to manual you're sorted so in the big list where
[2090.36] Lee: you've got things like telemetry or air mode all that crap at the bottom it has continuously trim
[2095.64] Lee: servos for manual mode so you can so the way i tend to do it i use auto launch and then it when
[2101.32] Lee: auto launch is finished it's usually in horizon and then it flies straight in horizon for a little
[2106.36] Lee: bit and then i go into manual because i don't actually fly with the help of inav um uh inav
[2112.28] Lee: is there to give me an on-screen display and a open um button because the return to home as you've
[2117.4] Lee: seen on the quad you know the return to home and the gps stuff in inav is far superior to
[2123.0] Lee: what's in beta flight all the beta flight fans are going nuts right now but you know the the
[2127.24] Lee: way that return to home works actually comes to the back to the home position uh in a quad it
[2133.08] Lee: then descends and then it hits the ground and lands and disarms all automatically or you can
[2138.68] Lee: do things like you can set an alternative home position so if you're flying in a place where you
[2143.88] Lee: don't want it to come back to in the event of a fail save but there's a lovely big field over here
[2148.2] Lee: you can tell i now just go to the field instead or maybe it's um you know it's a long flight
[2153.96] Lee: where it's a single direction and you want um like safe home points yeah safe home points
[2159.48] Lee: you can set them up or you can even do things like mission flying you know where you can save
[2163.64] Lee: house then well this is that this is the thing you do have to be careful about um you know
[2170.2] Lee: things like mission because now you can auto load the mission into memory every time you beat it but
[2176.04] Lee: bottom line is there is shed loads of new stuff in inav three and so far touch wood there's been
[2182.44] Lee: one little maintenance release a little thing you want um but everything i've tried it on jack it's
[2187.8] Lee: just it's just worked and it's worked really nicely the only annoying thing about inav 3.0 at the
[2192.68] Lee: moment is the documentation is still absolutely crap it's still on the web on the wiki they're
[2198.2] Stephen: still working to try and update it all between two five and three i think they changed the way
[2203.16] Stephen: some of the programming was done didn't they the global functions yeah with the logical um
[2210.44] Lee: the logical switching and things like that has changed anyway before let's get into a single
[2216.04] Lee: thing where it used to be a couple of different pieces yeah and it was it was it was almost like
[2221.16] Lee: something out of open tx in the first implementation and i did a video on it which meant that if you
[2225.96] Lee: if you understood the open tx stuff which about five percent of people do you kind of looked at
[2230.44] Lee: that in inav and went oh okay yeah got it um but it needs to be really simple but the nice thing
[2236.12] Lee: is with inav 3 is it's easier to set up and get it flying than it was in previous versions in my
[2242.76] Lee: humble opinion there's more stuff done automatically for you not enough still yeah it's not you know
[2248.28] Lee: when an open pilot um levels of you know wizardry but um but no it just it just works it's cracking
[2255.08] Stephen: you i love it stuff like enable and disable server outputs on switches and set them to
[2259.96] Lee: predetermined defaults and things kind of useful you can do all that all that stuff um and it just
[2267.08] Lee: it just works really nice i love auto launch you know i use it on everything now because it just
[2271.88] Lee: means you go up the field you know you your arm um the the wing you just whack the throttle up to
[2278.12] Lee: 100 and just throw it you can you know and then by the time you've got your goggles push pull down
[2284.68] Lee: onto your eyes and you've got your your fingers on on your sticks you're already 100 120 feet
[2290.28] Lee: and as soon as you touch the sticks you know you're out of auto launch and it just all those times
[2295.32] Lee: you've got the field and you you know you'd spend five minutes getting set up and you'd be already
[2300.04] Lee: and you'd throw the wing and you'd throw it in a really bad way and it just goes straight into the
[2304.52] Lee: ground and the battery would be ejected and your gopro would disappear into a bush yeah all that
[2309.48] Lee: stuff is just so much nicer you can just throw the bloody thing so uh so jack if you want to
[2314.36] Lee: set something up with i now 3.0 i'm happy if you want me to talk you through it man it's but it's
[2320.04] Jack: yeah sounds sounds pretty it sounds unbelievable um you know the whole um you've got to be careful
[2326.52] Jack: moving home steve um if you're too far away it will ignore that safe point okay but also like you
[2334.52] Stephen: know too far well what's the too far boundary we're talking a couple of kilometers well you can
[2343.16] Jack: you can set it you can set it uh manually but i think it's like something like 40
[2350.28] Jack: you know 40 meters or something i can't remember it's something like that we asked
[2354.76] Lee: pavil a long time ago there's a couple of safe things that you check there's one um checking
[2361.08] Lee: how far because the thing is in theory when you arm it is when you set your home position if you
[2365.8] Lee: haven't set you know kind of safe homes um but also if you create a mission and the first way
[2371.0] Lee: point is too far away from where you arm it um you know it will it will kind of go no i'm not doing
[2376.2] Lee: that that sounds too dodgy and it does mean that you know if you set a mission up went for a flying
[2381.32] Lee: day in york chair and then you're over here in the northwest you don't go hit the mission switch
[2386.6] Lee: accidentally and it just takes off over the pen irons and you ever see it again um i get a good a
[2391.72] Lee: good comment here from lurky one uh he says so basically what we're saying is everyone is making
[2397.08] Lee: really cool stuff but not writing an instruction manual um yeah pretty much lurky that's pretty
[2403.56] Curry: much what we're saying it's more anti-cold cool stuff it's less fun to document it nicely
[2409.72] Lee: yeah well none of the developers want to spend time sitting doing the boring crap and go back
[2415.48] Lee: to my point about then these developers know how it works already why should they bother to document
[2420.2] Lee: it yeah and and as far as the devs who respect just read the code yeah yeah it's just obvious
[2426.76] Stephen: and this is this is part of my day job like why we don't need documents just read the code
[2432.2] Lee: yeah but steve that's a common thing with very you know very clever technical people is for
[2437.8] Lee: them it's so obvious is sometimes they struggle to kind of take it back to the crayon level for
[2444.12] Stephen: the new pilot who's never seen it before to explain how it works as it was described to me by one of
[2449.64] Stephen: our senior technical staff yeah to go to take the engineer's stuff and talk to the executives who
[2455.24] Stephen: actually held the purse strings and draw big animal pictures on a whiteboard to explain how
[2459.24] Stephen: it all worked and mr camo over here wants software as a service mr pigeon over here has some
[2466.36] Lee: electricity yeah but the level crossing between the zoo and the pond isn't big enough so what we
[2474.44] Lee: have to do yeah okay right i get it now yeah that's bandwidth but but but a lot but going back to
[2480.44] Lee: loogie's point yeah that's absolutely the point if a lot of the developers want to do all the cool
[2484.44] Lee: stuff and exciting stuff and if to be fair i kind of want to do that stuff as well going back
[2489.8] Lee: afterwards and trying to write it in a way that explains it in sock puppet level thank you um is
[2497.88] Lee: is just not a fun sexy part of the job and that's that's why you know my point before about elrs i
[2503.4] Lee: think them having some kind of commercial support by from the hardware vendors to to make sure that
[2508.92] Stephen: stuff happens is it's really important bear in mind they only hit 1.0 like a month ago so
[2514.6] Stephen: this is all very early days maybe a couple of years down the line it'll look a bit more sane
[2520.52] Lee: yeah i i think it will i think in six months from now i think it'll be a completely different
[2525.16] Lee: landscape i think it's a little bit like like you mentioned with the d8 clones and stuff it's a
[2530.44] Lee: little bit like the world west at the moment and and you know do we just need to just need to stick
[2536.2] Lee: with it and i'm i'm quite prepared to because i want it to succeed it's got to be better than d8
[2541.08] Stephen: right that's what you've got at the moment as your open source free clone alternative d8 d16 which
[2546.44] Jack: suck let's just move on d16 is not even you know free sky keep throwing their prama out about that
[2554.44] Stephen: yeah yeah if you've got a new fr sky radio you're not using any of the clone stuff because they uh
[2560.36] Stephen: you know they drop support for the old d16 ironically if you've got multi-protocol module
[2565.4] Stephen: you can pair to the new fr sky stuff with fr sky x2 but you if you've got an fr sky radio you
[2573.48] Stephen: a new fr sky radio you can't connect to any of the traditional fr sky equipment so
[2578.84] Lee: isn't that crazy a third party piece of technology can actually speak to more free sky technology
[2585.08] Lee: than free free sky technology can and we all know exactly why that is right because they you know
[2591.8] Lee: the boardroom had a bit of a tantrum and wanted to make that rule the world yeah absolutely
[2597.16] Lee: absolutely and and they went for their board on my home yeah that's what it's about they stopped
[2602.76] Lee: giving pilots what they want and tried to do with the ggi which is selling stuff that they want to
[2608.52] Lee: sell to people because because that way you know you're you're in control the relationship not the
[2614.76] Lee: customer and all the open source stuff is absolutely the other side of that you know and i think the
[2620.04] Curry: result of that though is they open the door for the likes of radio master and jumper because
[2624.68] Curry: there's one thing i don't hear about people buying at the moment is free sky radios that's just
[2628.92] Stephen: they're excited about the new tv s mambo but they're not crying over the new fr sky ethos
[2634.44] Stephen: radio are they maybe that ethos is targeted more to the really rich fixed-wing guys little dump 500
[2639.72] Stephen: quid on a radio not care about it but i don't see any quad pilots looking at that new ethos stuff
[2645.88] Lee: no no i i i wouldn't at the moment be interested in doing a review of that
[2652.68] Lee: just just because i'd there's so much other really cool interesting stuff
[2657.96] Lee: because radio master continue to make innovative i would just love a smaller radio that has full
[2664.28] Lee: four in one functionality because the mambo i actually really like the size of the mambo
[2669.24] Lee: i think that's a beautiful size radio the only the only issue i have with the radio master is
[2674.2] Stephen: it's just it's a big boy got on a fail safe modules in here that's about as small as you
[2679.32] Lee: can get really does the job because those those are amazing if you want to if you're on a backpack
[2685.8] Lee: with a little wing to disappear you know to park your car and disappear into the woods or whatever
[2690.68] Lee: or onto a you know top of a mountain to go flying you don't you don't want a tx16 you want something
[2697.16] Lee: like that you know and if you if you get a certain generation if you're a gamer you know
[2703.32] Lee: and you're used to holding an xbox or playstation which all those things just feel so bloody natural
[2707.72] Stephen: they're lovely yeah and you get an okay amount of flight time i i do occasionally take a usb power
[2713.72] Stephen: pack and usb c into the back of it when i'm flying just to avoid any low battery alarms but
[2719.64] Stephen: you know that's because i don't switch it off between flights and i just leave it running for
[2723.8] Stephen: hours on end and i'm getting sort of three hours out of it i guess with with express lrs running
[2729.56] Stephen: the whole time it's not too shabby that's not bad that's not bad because that yeah if you're
[2734.84] Lee: with your mates that's a full day's worth of flying if you just you know you send the radio
[2738.84] Lee: off in between definitely not too shabby yeah i saw that um there were a couple of people i think
[2746.84] Stephen: the the latest fr sky one had android integrated into it and i started looking at some of the
[2752.36] Stephen: photaba radios and i think their high end have android in as well and it seems like they're
[2757.0] Stephen: targeting a very specific demographic and i won't say it's age related but it's certainly
[2762.52] Stephen: technology related the sort of person who thinks that they should maybe look at their flight plans
[2767.96] Stephen: and talk to their friends on their radio which has an android element instead of get their phone out
[2772.92] Stephen: and use their phone to do that and that seems seems to be what they're doing but then you've
[2777.56] Stephen: got the problem of after sale support i'm pretty sure that photaba and all these people are not
[2782.52] Stephen: going to be updating their radios every couple of months for the latest android security fixes and
[2787.16] Stephen: patches so you've got this radio that's going to be stuck in 2020 or 2019 whenever you bought it
[2793.56] Stephen: and meanwhile android and everything else is moving on at 100 mile an hour and your radio
[2798.12] Stephen: is going to be looking out at date far quicker than your t16 or other similar radio would look
[2803.24] Lee: out date yeah and the issue of course with android is that they're all variations on a theme
[2808.76] Lee: you know there's no one android implementation you know it gets a little bit more complicated
[2813.88] Lee: for that i know i've come a cropper with some of that stuff recently but it's an interesting one
[2820.12] Lee: i mean because we've already had that explosion in the radio market and it seems to kind of resolve
[2828.92] Lee: down to a to a sensible number of players again who are actually serious about it and making decent
[2833.56] Stephen: stuff what do you think is going to happen in the radio market now because it's been stagnant
[2837.32] Stephen: outside of the mambo which looks really promising the major players you know we had radio master
[2842.52] Stephen: clone jumper and isheen clone radio master and all these things just exploded out of that t16
[2848.44] Lee: design but nothing since then it's been really quiet well well nobody cloned anybody actually
[2856.44] Lee: i don't know if you are aware of the background of this steven so so the the original is a strong
[2862.2] Stephen: term but there's a very there's a very there's an influence if you measure the dimensions there
[2866.04] Stephen: within 10 mil of each other on every dimension and they are basically they're basically the
[2870.52] Lee: same radio right it's it they're all riffing on the same theme um a common design that was created
[2876.2] Lee: by radio master well actually with jumper and radio master's parent company and then they split
[2882.68] Lee: and they created their own radio master brand and then they uh white labeled a version of that for
[2888.84] Stephen: isheen so so actually you know the same processes people do in enterprise technology they just take
[2894.28] Stephen: something that's made by a company you've never heard of and they put a new chassis on it and
[2898.04] Stephen: they put their logo on it and they put their software on it and they say this is our product
[2901.88] Stephen: they didn't make the product they just kind of wrapped it yeah and to be honest the the radio
[2906.76] Lee: master stuff is touchwood so good that it's we're at the point now where people are how they want
[2912.04] Lee: to white label it because actually it's it's it's less of a hassle and less of a risk than going
[2917.72] Lee: out and creating something new uh the exciting thing is and i don't know this yet because i've
[2923.24] Lee: just been teased by radio master it looks like there is some new stuff coming um but but radio
[2929.16] Lee: master have that have at the moment i think the chance to really become what freesky were for us
[2935.32] Lee: in the hobby six seven years ago where they were the answer to all the people who wanted to be
[2940.84] Lee: monolithic and proprietary and close source and they came along and just kicked the doors open
[2946.12] Lee: and went you know free we're freesky we don't believe in this we're going to give you the the
[2950.6] Lee: most capable radio for the money anyone's ever seen i think i think you know we need someone
[2955.32] Lee: else to do that and hopefully radio master will do it they've got the technology they've got the
[2959.48] Lee: know-how um you know the only thing that i'm i've got a question mark about and i'm you know i'm
[2964.28] Lee: interested in your guy's thoughts is the whole open tx htx thing which you know that it's a big
[2970.28] Lee: part of what a lot of people are looking at for these radios around that are you interested in
[2976.36] Lee: i'm not interested in any part of htx but that's kind of why why i'm not interested in htx
[2983.24] Lee: because i i want well let let let let me turn it around why are you are you interested in htx
[2991.16] Stephen: yeah yeah because i i wanted to run 500 hz which open tx said they weren't interested in supporting
[2998.92] Stephen: um right i wanted to get new mixer sync updates which open tx weren't going to release soon
[3004.28] Stephen: and i hope to buy a color radio in the future and get touchscreen support which
[3008.92] Jack: open why do you want touchscreen in the color screen when you're wearing goggles
[3015.08] Stephen: just to be able to jump around my models i mean i'm okay so fair enough i don't actually own a
[3020.12] Stephen: color screen radio right now i've got some black and white ones and they're doing me just fine but
[3023.8] Stephen: i thought it might be nice when we get to a level of software sophistication that can actually make
[3027.88] Stephen: use of the color screens it'd be nice and i think that goes hand in hand when you get these better
[3033.4] Stephen: radios they enable better software and it opens up the horizons for what you can achieve in the
[3037.96] Stephen: software and open tx is working very well for fixed wing pilots that want a stable and dependable
[3045.16] Stephen: radio base but i think htx is there for people who want to try some some cutting edge features
[3051.16] Stephen: doesn't mean the cutting edge is necessarily better it might be a lot less reliable but they
[3054.68] Stephen: want to try it out and see what it's like experiment a little bit you know try something new
[3061.16] Lee: the reason that i'm not excited about the whole htx thing is kind of going back to jack's point
[3065.32] Lee: i have a lot of the radios with the color screen and to be blunt i the only thing i use the screen
[3069.8] Lee: for is to change the model memory when i'm binding and then once i'm flying i've got the
[3074.76] Lee: goggles on so the whole idea of touch although it was kind of an exciting thing in the early days
[3079.8] Lee: i'm kind of you know what i'd rather have some of the other features that you're talking about
[3085.96] Lee: steven then you know touch is not those things are interesting but actually for me what i'm
[3091.16] Lee: more excited about or i would get more emotional about is making open tx and those radios
[3099.24] Lee: easier to use so the more accessible for your pilots right because because open the reason
[3105.0] Lee: i have like 300 videos and open cx and stuff is because it is incredibly complicated now
[3112.44] Lee: for us who have been using it for a long time um you know you kind of oh i need to increase
[3117.8] Lee: my expo i'll add another switch for the beeper you know it's a two second job well 20 seconds
[3122.68] Stephen: but it's not is it and that's one thing i get out with htx as well so i came from a world using
[3127.88] Stephen: this little yellow meaning here and when i plug this into usb i don't have a configurator app
[3134.36] Stephen: it appears as usb drive and i go into it and there's a directory called models and i have
[3139.48] Stephen: model one dot i and i model two model three model four right and each of those i and i
[3144.44] Stephen: files is just a plain text file so i can go in there and i can edit it and i can say i want this
[3148.92] Stephen: switch to do that and if i want switch to be configured the same as another model i can look
[3152.52] Stephen: how the other model is configured yeah copy it and paste it i don't have to fanny around click
[3157.72] Stephen: click click click click click click click click click click click and watch lee's video to do it
[3161.72] Stephen: i could just copy and paste it and that is what htx is trying to do they're trying to move the
[3166.36] Stephen: configuration files because right now if you save models in open tx it actually takes a snapshot of
[3172.36] Stephen: the ram and it serializes it and sends it to disk which is a terrible way of saving everything
[3178.68] Stephen: it's up it's awful because when you snapshot the ram it doesn't make it easy for a user to edit you
[3184.92] Stephen: need a dedicated application companion yeah and it's very very brittle because you there's no
[3191.56] Stephen: kind of configuration checking you've got to understand all of the paths that go through
[3196.36] Stephen: the code and make sure that memory contents would work in the code yeah so it's kind of
[3200.92] Stephen: the worst of both worlds and with htx they're talking about moving away from that memory dump
[3206.6] Stephen: format to a yaml format and yaml ain't a markup language is is a standard sort of the the most
[3213.56] Stephen: human readable way of storing config files is generally agreed like you've got xml and json
[3219.8] Stephen: which chuck loads of brackets and quotes and everything and you've got yaml which is basically
[3223.88] Stephen: just text with some colons and white space so it confuses me that that people would be
[3229.88] Curry: editing off radio it seems to me that when you get a radio it's best to learn how to do things
[3235.88] Curry: on the radio and with most of the things you're saying i've set up my model first time which
[3239.8] Curry: depending on your experience level might be a bit of a ball like but then when you set up your next
[3243.4] Curry: model you're basically saying copy that model to this and then maybe change a bit around i don't
[3248.68] Curry: maybe it's just me i don't really understand and i think for the the basic user the the idea of
[3253.32] Curry: like you connect up to usb you go to the text file and you do this and this is much more scary and
[3258.36] Curry: in depth than saying press these buttons and copy that model and if you want to change switches
[3262.84] Curry: around this how you do i just i don't understand that the the case of like taking it offline and
[3267.8] Stephen: editing in a different way i discovered how i could reuse the trims on this radio and make them into
[3272.92] Stephen: switches and i wanted to go and do that for all of my models and so i could just paste
[3277.64] Stephen: the same section into every model's file instead of edit edit or create a brand new model for each
[3282.6] Lee: one i i i see if i get where you're coming from because i would i would love manufacturers to
[3289.24] Lee: be able to ship model memories and radio setups as part of it you know whether it's a a helicopter
[3296.68] Lee: a quad whatever and it was and it was easy to put it on the radio you know today i actually had
[3301.8] Lee: a situation um with my tarantas which is behind me whoops see not the right way around again um
[3308.12] Lee: and i i built the plane and the way i build the planes is that i figure out what the
[3314.84] Lee: middle channels need to be using a servo checker and write the numbers down 14 50 you know for
[3319.72] Lee: the middle channel for the a-1 whatever and then i program that on the radio and when i plug it all
[3323.88] Lee: in it's all absolutely spot on it's just the way i've always done it but i thought i'll be a smart
[3328.2] Lee: arse i was on the computer so i created the modeling companion going back to and going back
[3333.72] Lee: to wayne's point i i never do this but i thought oh i'll you know maybe it'll make a video so i
[3339.0] Lee: did it in companion and i plugged the radio in and there's like the other 40 model memories
[3344.76] Lee: that are on the radio three of three of which haven't been backed up anywhere because they're
[3350.04] Lee: new models i've got in so then i dragged and dropped the new model onto the radio and wrote
[3354.6] Lee: it all back wayne's already way ahead of me because he's giggling um and then kind of power
[3360.2] Lee: cycled the radio the radio came back up and went oh EPROM inconsistency for you know i'll sort
[3365.56] Lee: this out and it came back up and it wiped everything and i had that bit you know you know
[3370.28] Lee: where you kind of bum all girls like that and i was thinking oh my god because there's literally
[3375.48] Lee: 40 models on here i haven't backed it up since april thank god companion actually backed did a
[3381.32] Lee: backup i had to scramble and find this backup and put it on but it but it just it would just be
[3385.96] Lee: lovely if there was a way that you could upload that you know like a model memory and it would
[3391.88] Lee: kind of go okay yeah tell me okay there are four switches in this model memory which one do you
[3397.88] Lee: want for arming flick it now which one do you want for modes flick it now and it just set it up at
[3404.04] Lee: the moment you know if i can make a mistake like that having used open tx for six odd years
[3410.28] Lee: the guys who have never seen this stuff before are absolutely snookered i mean we haven't had
[3415.48] Lee: we haven't had any proper wizards for anything apart from multi-rotor and a couple of fixed
[3421.88] Lee: wings uh for youngs you know i i want that kind of stuff um as a guy who spends a lot of time
[3429.0] Lee: helping open tx people with their radios there is a million things i would like in open tx uh that
[3435.88] Stephen: that is not touchscreen yeah and i think basically all these things that you want which the most
[3444.33] Stephen: conservative open tx users don't give a damn about that's why htx exists i no no no no no
[3450.73] Lee: stephen sorry i'll make myself clear no no it's it's not that it's not that i'm talking about
[3456.41] Lee: esoteric stuff or wacky stuff or things that nobody uses the questions that i'm getting on
[3461.05] Lee: a daily basis the basic things because open tx is so yeah why can't there be a wizard and things
[3465.93] Stephen: like that but these are all new features and i think right now it seems the open tx project
[3470.33] Stephen: has got to a point where it's really difficult to get new code in there unless it's a bug fix
[3475.21] Stephen: on an existing function like when when the elrs guys said well we'd like 500 hertz they said oh
[3481.77] Stephen: well we designed for 250 hertz rate and that was it that was the most like well can we add 500
[3488.89] Stephen: no we're designing for 250 hertz oh okay yeah 250 hertz isn't broken we're not going to fix it
[3496.41] Lee: was basically i mean it it reminds me of the back in the days when we had clean flight and
[3502.25] Lee: beta flight do you remember those yeah yeah exactly and it kind of feels like the same kind
[3507.37] Lee: of situation where the new version might become the default standard um but but yet sometimes
[3515.45] Lee: these things become self-fulfilling prophecies because if if you know going back to the whole
[3519.53] Lee: thing about developers if you had some time and you wanted to to work on something you know do
[3525.69] Lee: you go to the project that's exciting and sexy and enables you to do those things and play
[3531.53] Lee: or do you go to the project that's a little bit more uh less exciting and and more restrictive
[3537.37] Lee: you know it's kind of human nature you're always going to go to the sexier one so it's kind of it's
[3541.77] Lee: so but that means that the the one that's a bit more restrictive and a bit more doesn't
[3545.93] Lee: get some other love and i'm not i'm not sure that open tx you know i don't quite i'm not
[3552.97] Lee: i'm quite ready for open tx to be abandoned in that way in favor of another another version
[3558.49] Stephen: and where where all the sexy stuff happens i think i was talking to korea might have been
[3562.49] Stephen: someone else and people who have open tx you know that oh i'm running open tx 2.2 will that
[3567.69] Stephen: feature work and i'm like wow that means you know you haven't upgraded that radio in quite a few
[3573.37] Stephen: years and i think lots of open tx people are absolutely fine with that they just want something
[3577.69] Curry: to work yeah and my question was is is open tx still heavily funded by freesky and is is there a
[3586.89] Curry: because you were talking lee earlier about perhaps elo ice should get funded in some way to do that
[3593.05] Curry: but i've i've always felt there's there's been a bit of a i don't know if it's like being pulled
[3599.13] Curry: in two different directions but it felt like freesky did control open tx at least in in some ways
[3604.89] Curry: for some time and that's why we have freed in tx right well that is yet another talk for tv s yeah
[3612.73] Lee: well interestingly if you look at what trappy is backing trappy is backing open tx
[3620.33] Lee: yeah he's not backing edge gx he's backing open tx so not everybody is has gone with a big shiny
[3626.97] Stephen: i don't think it comes with one or the other like open tx is just where if you want to put in some
[3631.21] Stephen: experimental features put them in there and tv s are not selling experimental features tv s is
[3636.89] Stephen: supporting a range of products that have been out for years so nothing about tv s is experimental
[3642.97] Stephen: it's going in as just standard updates to the routine open tx code base it's just a new target
[3649.69] Lee: essentially it's a new radio support isn't it that's what they're after for their manbo and the
[3654.41] Lee: tango too but but then to be fair he needs that because if you have an older freesky radio and
[3660.33] Lee: you want to use one of his technologies if you're going to copy your models between hopefully more
[3664.73] Lee: successfully than i did today copy your models between the radios companions the way that you
[3669.61] Lee: kind of have to do that unless you want a world of pain on a related note i thought well we've got
[3675.53] Stephen: you chaps on here there was a guy in our discord who was saying oh i've got a new quad um what
[3683.05] Stephen: should i get for antennas and i don't know if anyone's looked around but they've they've been
[3688.97] Stephen: quite short of late there's a some definitely some stock shortages that are starting to roll
[3693.53] Stephen: through and i wondered you know what what you guys might pick for a general purpose antenna maybe
[3699.53] Stephen: we could talk about what we pick for our super fancy rapid in cotton wool antenna what you put
[3705.29] Stephen: on your beta quad and fly around the trees and what you put on the sort of cheap things
[3711.53] Stephen: where you don't need great range goggles on what model both well for both let's start out with
[3716.97] Stephen: goggles because the premium options you're going to put on your goggles where they don't get smacked
[3720.49] Stephen: around right and jack scratching himself with what's that sure i see you're a menace or something
[3724.89] Jack: menace we've got menace right yeah yeah surely menace has all your antenna needs
[3734.57] Curry: although greg's an office it's what i've been using the periscope and one of the patches
[3740.41] Curry: depending on the one i'm usually the pico patch actually well i did recommend the menace periscope
[3747.29] Jack: then go yeah i mean here we go right let me let me let me simple this down right you've got
[3753.61] Jack: you've got vas not available in this country and very expensive
[3758.09] Jack: you know and they're kind of like brought over you got true rc they're all like how you doing
[3763.29] Jack: and tim hortons and what's all that they bought so they're over in you know above yeehaw land
[3770.09] Jack: and it's your area of canada yeah
[3774.97] Jack: the free health care area of the yeah and yeah and then you've got like the triumphs
[3781.77] Jack: and stuff like that they're just made by vas and you're paying the tbs tax and uh and then you've
[3789.61] Stephen: got the cheap cruddy stuff in china i have to say my my triumph does have an impressively robust
[3795.37] Stephen: looking plastic shell on it and i've had some plastic shells that just crap themselves the
[3799.69] Stephen: instant i tapped a branch and i never found fine it just explodes you know there's you end up with
[3804.41] Curry: a cylinder with no top on it and all that stuff on on the chords i've been so impressed with um
[3811.05] Curry: rush fpv is is a a company i really like for their vtx's and their cherry antennas um i put
[3817.77] Curry: these up against some quite premium antennas and they really did perform very well uh that's kind
[3823.61] Stephen: of my outside kind of like the true rc ones right yeah yeah i'm the same as jack i'm a
[3832.84] Lee: menace rc pilot i use them pretty exclusively on everything um the stubbies on the on the models
[3840.84] Lee: the aero pods on the wings because it's an aerodynamic um shell that goes against the body
[3846.44] Lee: and uh the periscope with the what's their their kind of double layer thing and they just
[3853.48] Lee: they're just the thing yeah the thing yeah the pico patch the thing is they're not particularly
[3857.32] Lee: expensive so if i smash one and i don't really care i'll just i'll as long as the vtx works i'll
[3863.4] Jack: just put another one on it see these were great but you obviously you can't really get them that
[3869.32] Jack: much the old fat shark immersion rc things did you see the antenna lab test that greg and i did uh
[3877.72] Stephen: with glrc mini hammer i'm struggling i want to get the mirroring there that's that for a micro
[3884.2] Stephen: is quite good um yeah it is a micro antenna though you wouldn't want anything big but instead of a
[3890.36] Stephen: it's got a rubbery stem so they've put a bit of rubber below the antenna instead of hard plastic
[3896.52] Jack: or heat shrink so it just bounces which is quite nice yeah yeah i didn't see the antenna lab i was
[3905.4] Lee: going to watch it but i'm an asshole but no no the the interesting thing is probably the best
[3910.84] Lee: antenna that including greg stuff was actually that one you've just had in your hands that old
[3916.36] Lee: style big mush room ugly um immersion rc fat shark one from back in the day uh was just
[3924.12] Lee: amazing that vswr was really low across the entire that was a closely fantastic shell right
[3930.44] Stephen: um yeah before it for moved to pagodas right because i've got some of the og oh yeah it was
[3938.68] Stephen: layers and they just separated them with a piece of wire and they got trashed and then they wrapped
[3943.0] Stephen: the whole thing in a plastic shell and it's like the one jack scott in his left hand there i believe
[3948.36] Stephen: so right hand cloverleaf in a plastic shell and pagoda in the other one yeah that's right
[3953.24] Lee: it did i'd still remember those early days of fpv where we'd get those exposed wire ones
[3961.56] Lee: and then you crash and they get all twisted and you just try and eyeball it and fly and we
[3967.8] Stephen: oh how the heck did we manage for that's exactly why people move to pagodas right because the
[3972.6] Stephen: cloverleafs got trashed so easily the pakodas you could put them on a pcb and you wouldn't have to
[3977.24] Curry: hand that's it jack yeah but those are really good and people got really really good at making
[3983.48] Curry: them there's a little sort of home economy from people you always knew the right personal forum
[3988.12] Curry: to go to to make you an antenna and you'd have a little kit there and he'd bend them and he'd spend
[3992.76] Curry: money doing his like swr stuff and it's like yeah brilliant then yeah you crash it and you ship
[3997.96] Curry: let me just get a pair of pliers and that looks about right and see how that works now
[4005.32] Jack: we need to convince menace to do ufl stuff though that's the only that's the only thing with menace
[4012.92] Stephen: well he's not keen on that as a connector is it he's trying to know people using bloody ufl
[4018.6] Lee: no they only only have a handful of connections um in the specs before their script but talking
[4025.48] Lee: about menace that probably brings us nice onto western park doesn't it boom boom no because it's
[4031.0] Jack: the end of the show you spent too long arguing about open edge tx or whatever or open tx it was
[4040.52] Jack: like we don't like it when mommy and daddy fight the poor cat hasn't been fed but yes we will be at
[4048.76] Jack: uh uh uh western park i believe you're gonna be representing the show are you jack
[4055.08] Jack: no that's frank's job i'm gonna be too heavily drugged perfect yeah don't forget i'm out in
[4062.52] Jack: public so i need to be heavily medicated so i don't say anything too offensive that's all
[4069.69] Lee: well well i because i think menace is at the show isn't he i think greg's down there um
[4074.01] Lee: i believe so so uh so yeah we we can we can ask him about ufl connectors at western on saturday
[4081.69] Lee: and find out yeah his uh his his opinion uh but i think it's because they're just crap connectors
[4087.69] Lee: for many if you if you make the connection once from what from what i can recall the last time i
[4093.29] Lee: spoke to him about it it's fine but if you constantly undo and remake the connection
[4097.93] Curry: you get five or ten yeah i completely understand more than once i've connected it and i've gone to
[4104.09] Curry: unconnect and the entire pcb has just come away with it and it's like oh dear that's the problem
[4110.97] Stephen: sold it on ufl after it gave up the ghost what i normally do is i put them down and then you know
[4115.69] Stephen: that the welder glue it's kind of like a rubbery adhesive nick burns always tells people to fix
[4120.41] Stephen: their whoops with it yeah i've got a load of that for fixing whoops back in the day and uh yeah i
[4126.09] Stephen: just put a blob of that on the ufl and it works like the kind of yellow glue that you see from
[4131.13] Stephen: pcb manufacturers you get a bnf with the ufl they usually put this yellow foam glue on it
[4136.41] Stephen: it's like that but you can actually peel it off stops it wriggling right um that's all we've got
[4143.29] Jack: time for but uh you've been joined by everyone's favorite curry kitten right the person who could
[4151.37] Jack: put walruses to shame with his mustache deon thanks jack cheers and everyone's
[4160.49] Jack: favorite this is how you use open tx pain the 360 thanks jack and i've been bright as a life lie
[4168.33] Jack: see you at western or not thank you good night cheers bye bye bye catch you later telemetry last