Firmware feature suggestions

[s_mack]

Mike... a few people having difficulties led me to think of a couple useful functions:

1) is it possible upon first installing, at the time the slave firmware is auto-flashed to the 9x, to have the original flash or at least eeprom automatically backed up?

2) can we have the possibility for the 9Xtreme to behave as a standard programmer in case a user wants to remove the 9Xtreme and/or for diagnostic purposes, etc?

If both can be done then we could even have a built-in "uninstall" function that can be engaged which puts the system to the state it was at prior to installation.

I would say #2 is the higher priority.

[MikeB]

I was wondering a bit about that myself.
The existing EEPROM on the AVR processor is NOT modified or used by the 9Xtreme.

I already have an option to allow updating of the firmware on the AVR from data in the 9Xtreme firmware. It should be possible to get this, as an alternative, to flash the AVR from a file on the SD card. As soon as you do so, you will lose the display from the 9Xtreme, and would need to power off and remove the 9Xtreme or it would put the 'slave' firmware back on when re-powered.

Mike.

[s_mack]

I'd call that "good enough". Possible to say that on screen to the user? "warning: after flashing your 9x you must remove the 9Xtreme board or it will be rewitten again" (or whatever).

[MikeB]

I think the obvious place for this is in "maintenance mode" (power on with horizontal trims APART), which is where you flash the bootloader and external SPort devices and Tx modules, and the co-processor on the SKY board.

It will take a few days to code and test, a bit more if I need to handle .hex files rather than binary ones.

Mike.

[s_mack]

If the bin files were readily available, I'd say that's perfectly acceptable.

Anyway, not a huge rush... just something I thought could be useful in certain circumstances.

[jhsa]

As you will be working on the bootloader, what do you think of the idea of making an option available, maybe in maintenance mode, to start the firmware with the Hardware menu visible?
No need to worry about key combinations. Just the one to start the bootloader. By selecting the option and pressing MENU the radio would start immediately and the hardware menu would be visible in the Radio Setup index menu, maybe at the bottom. Even if there was no space on the index, the hw menu could replace one of the existing menus. It would not be needed anyway while we configure the hardware

João

[MikeB]

Not easily possible. The only way to exit either the bootloader or maintenance mode is a processor reset.

Mike.

[jhsa]

That would be a killer way to do it, but if not possible then, what about the trims again? Maybe if turning the radio on while pressing say the right horizontal trim towards the center of the radio.. Not both trims, just one..

João

[MikeB]

Testing something like that, rather than hide the hardware menu option, I have the hardware menu just displaying "Disabled" when selected.
It could show something like:
Disabled
Power on holding
left trim left

Mike.

[jhsa]

I wouldn't tell how to enable it.. One good reason to hide it, is also that others don't get there.
It will be in the manual for sure when available. Meanwhile you could put a note on eepskye in the hardware menu, so if people forget how to enable it just have to look in there..

João

[KAL]

It would be nice if the 9x board (with slave firmware) could display something like
"9Xtreme board not recognized" when the 9Xtreme board is removed (just to display anything).

Reason:
I received my 2 boards today and tried to install both. One installation was successful.
The second was nearly successfull. 9x board was flashed properly and I got the welcome message (audio).
I can enter maintenance mode and bootloader mode with the expected backlight color.
I have access via eepskye. But no LCD response (contrast is set at 30).

I think something went wrong with the LCD lines when I cleaned the 9X board from previous mods (megasound ...).
But now it's a bit hard to troubleshoot without 9Xtreme (I don't want to resolder USBASP if I can avoid it).

The option to reflash the 9x board with er9x via maintenance mode (once it's implemeted) is a bit tricky without display ...

Klaus

[MikeB]

The firmware flashed to the original AVR processor does display "9Xtreme" in the centre of the screen before it responds to display commands from the 9Xtreme. If you remove the 9Xtreme, and put all the connectors back on the original board, when you then power up, this message should appear on the display.

If this doesn't appear, then you do indeed have something wrong on the original board.

With the 9Xtreme, the backlight is used to indicate possible problems at startup.
Initially, the backlight is set to red.
The 9Xtreme then waits for up to 1 second for the original board to respond. Every quarter of a second, the red backlight toggles off or on.
If the original board sends serial data, the red backlight is turned off and the 9Xtreme continues with normal start up.
If, after 1 second, no data has been received, the 9Xtreme assumes the original board bneeds to be flashed. It sets the backlight to blue, then carries out the flashing of the AVR processor. If the flash operation appears to have worked, the backlight is set to green for 1 second, if the flashing fails, the backlight is set to red for 2 and a half seconds. In either case, the 9Xtreme then continues to try to operate normally.

Mike.

[KAL]

Thank you Mike for your quick response.

Then I have indeed a problem somewhere around the LCD.
Both radios show exact the same reaction at startup except the LCD.
Backlight flashes red for very short time then turns to the color I have set in "Display" menu.

Klaus

[willhac]

Firmware suggestion : it would be usefull to have "MULTI" as a protocol for the internal module (only PPM & PXX at the moment)

I also noticed that when binding by software (protocol MULTI/Flysky/Flysky), we have "Binding" on the screen until pushing EXIT, but the multiTX module himself only binds for a few 2-3 seconds (2-3sec LED blinking fast, then fixed). Before I noticed that, I couldn't bind my son's V911 because it's in bind mode only a few seconds too after inserting the battery.
Is it related to ersky9x, or to the multiprotocol firmware ?

Thanks

[MikeB]

I have the requirement to extend the number of protocols on the internal module in my "todo" list.

Mike.

[SuperFlyLoser]

Maybe I missed this option. However is there a way to get RSSI as a PWM (Like the Taranis) so it can be input to the MWOSD on a spare channel? I read about it Here: http://vk4ghz.com/mwosd-display-rssi-vi ... o-channel/ just thought it would add an extra useful function.

[MikeB]

One way is to use a Scaler to "route" the RSSI value to the input of a channel.
Set the Scaler with a source of RSSI. You will probably need to scale it, multiplying by 256 and dividing by 25. This converts 0 to 100 to 0 to 1024. This is needed as channel inputs are -1024 to +1024.
Then use the Scaler as the source of a channel.

Mike.