Hi everyone. I am new to the forum and new to the industry. I have just purchased a Cinestar 8 with MK FCT.I have a couple of questions today with more to come, I'm sure. Does anyone recommend a good fpv system that can possibly show parameters such as your horizon level? and is there a way to make the LED's start flashing when the battery level reaches a certain point? (Andy, I have watched your videos and they are extremely informative and i am sure you covered this at some point,i cant seem to find that part) Cheers,
Yes to the battery level. There is a video at Quadrocopter that can show you the settings but you need to have the PCB Extension board in order to do this. If you don't have the board you will need to purchase. And if you don't want to micro soldering have the dealer build it for you. For the inflight FPV with an MK stack a lot of us are using a board called the SmartOSD from http://smart-electronics.eu/index.php/en/smart-osd. Easy to install and gives you the data you need. Many of the dealers like QC also sell this board.
Hi Darren: I'm also using the Smart On Screen Display. For a camera I use this one FPV Cameras: http://hobbywireless.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=687 I actually use two cameras -- one looking forward (but tilted slightly down), and another looking straight down (so I can hold position more accurately). I use an RC channel with a transmitter switch to control which camera input goes to the Smart OSD board. Here's the switch: http://www.dpcav.com/xcart/R-C-Controlled-Dual-Video-Switch-2-Way.html Right now I'm using a 1.2Ghz Lawmate transmitter with Bluebeam antenna (that are much better than the standard whip antennae). http://www.dpcav.com/xcart/1280GHz-Bluebeam-Antenna-System-RHCP.html I'm going to experiment with using a Mondo Extreme 5.8Ghz FPV video downlink on a different channel from the Mondo Extreme I use for the payload camera video downlink. And relax -- you didn't miss anything in the DVD -- I didn't cover FPV systems on the DVD. Finally: thanks for the kind words about the DVD! I'm glad you found them helpful. Andy.
You can do the battery warning without the PCB Extension board if your just running the 4s setup. To do this run the positive wires from your LEDs to the + terminals on your PDB then run the negative wires from the LEDs to J16 and J17 on the FC: It's the top row of pins at the SV2 location. J16 and J17 are the two outside pins. Once connected there go into MKTools and in the Output Tab adjust the settings as follows: You can only attached 1 LED strip to each output location. If your using 2 LED strips you will need to enable the Undervoltage Warn for both output 1 and 2. Click active and set the code like it's shown above. Josh P.S. I have done this on my old setup and it works great without any issues.
Thanks, Josh. Don't know why, but I completely missed Darren's question about the LEDs. How much current can the FC board source through SV2? Andy.
No real need for the Extension PCB it would seem, then -- unless, of course, you need > 5 Amps -- and those would be "interesting" LEDs.... Andy.
That would be some EXTREMELY bright LEDS! I am using the PCB now though since I am running 22+V on my main power... that would make my LEDS really bright... for a short amount of time. lol Josh
Here some related questions. After a strange week of glitches last week, I now get another pattern of lights that Ive never seen before. Previous owner must have had them set-up, but I can't figure out what it is meant to be telling me. I see the pattern in Output Bitmask 1 and 2. How can I find out what it is trying to communicate to me?
Looks like it's just set to a random pattern until you hit the low-voltage warning blinks. In the top two rows click on the dark red spots to make the bright red (the entire row bright red) then you should have a solid LED until the low-voltage warning kicks in. Josh
Changing/stopping it isn't a problem. I was just so baffled when it started to do it. It began at the same time that my FC switched itself from Spektrum Hi res to Jeti and gave me a no Tx alarm. Since I was also having lots of GPS fix problems, I assumed that the previous programmer had programmed the lights to communicate something about a GPS error but I couldn't find anything in MK to tell me what. Glad to know its nothing.
Do you have a GPX file when these events occurred, you could have been getting an RC Lost errors. I had intermittent RC Lost once the LED's stated to blink in the similar fashion.
Thank you Andy, this is really helpful and informative. At the moment i am in the early stages of Flying and figuring everything out, but as soon as i build up the courage ill install one of these systems. Cheers.
Thank you Josh, I really appreciate your help, ill check it out and see if i can get it to work. Cheers.