Autodiscover Sensors in Companion 2.1.6

[Richard]

Am I looking in the wrong place?
I do not see any setting in the telemetry tab, showing "Autodiscover sensors". Should I first upload 2.1.6 to the Xmitter, set autodiscover in the Tx fw and then back download the settings to Companion and work from there?
Also, how do I know what each sensor (I only use FrSky sensors), is transmitting back to the Tx, to set the sensors table either as "Custom" or "Calculated". I am using RPM/Temperature sensor, LiPo voltage sensor, 150A current Sensor and GPS sensor. All V2.
Where can I get an explanation of the meaning of each parameter in the sensor's table?
I was playing some in the sensor's table, and for the basic settings I got it clear. However, I still do not have a clue on the use of the Precision, Ratio, Offset and all the check boxes.
One thing I was not able to figure out how to obtain Altitude from the GPS sensor. It seems you can get distance, but cannot find Altitude.
Thanks a lot for any help on this, and I apologize for my ignorance.

[kdm]

hi Richard, you are very much in the same position that I find myself in, I have come from 2.0.17 upgrading to 2.1.6 and I have gotten the FrSky FLVSS Smart Port LiPo Voltage Sensor working though and happy to send a screen shot of how I've set it up, for understanding I'm showing total battery voltage, each individual cell and then the voltage of the lowest cell.

my problem is with the GPS V2 where I cannot get it to show distance from the point of calibration which I used to have under 2.0.17.

not quite sure how to include screen shots or attachements but if you need I'll work it out. a tad new to forums.

hope that helps

[Kilrah]

Sensors need to be discovered on the radio, with the model/receiver/sensors installed and powered on. That will automatically populate all "native" values each of the sensors provide.
Extra calculations based on them can be added manually later.

[Richard]

kdm, thank you for your offering. I did not, and will not upgrade the radio to 2.1.x until I fully understand the new telemetry capabilities of the new version working on Companion. Your input about the GPS, is important to me, as I am using that too, and distance, altitude and speed are very important for me. I am having problems in understanding the telemetry calculations. I hope some one worked something on that. In short, what I want to achieve is descent rate and altitude-speed and distance-speed rates, but I cannot figure that out. There are important items in the calculation list, but division is not there and subtraction are not there.

[Richard]

Kilrah, Thank you for your response. That is a very interesting feature. Is there anywhere that you may lead me where to learn the use of the 2. 1 telemetry screen? Lot of goodies there, but hard to understand for an outsider from the development team.

[JanS]

As I understand it you have been able to make the telemetry from FLVSS function. My setup is FLVSS, X8R and Taranis with OpenTX 2.1.6. I have selected "Discover sensors" in the telemetry setup page, but only SWR, RSSI, RxBt and Cels show up. Cell is totally missing so it's no surprise that it's also missing on all telemetry pages. I would like to have cell available so I can set up a warning if any cell goes low. Any advice would be most appreciated.

[Kilrah]

New sensor, Calculated, Cell, choose your Cels sensor and "Lowest" index.

viewtopic.php?f=45&t=6887

[JanS]

Hello and thanks for your quick answer. It's working for me now.
However, I would like to eleborate somewhat on the matter to the benefit of someone new to telemetry on the Taranis with firmware 2.1.X(6).

How to use telemetry to monitor battery voltages on Taranis with firmware 2.1.X(6).
First connect and power up the FLVSS and X8R in the model. If not already done create a model in the Taranis and bind the receiver to the transmitter.
From the startpage on the Taranis press MENU once, then longpress PAGE to get to page 12 (telemetry).
With the receiver still powered on go down on this page to "Discover new sensors..." and press ENT. Now SWR, RSSI, RxBt and Cels will show up on the screen (more if you have other sensors connected). Press ENT again on "Stop discovery". However, only the total battery voltage (Cels) is shown and you might want to see the voltage of the individual cells. To make this possible go to "Add sensor..." and press ENT. On the new page shown enter:
Name Anything you like eg Cel1
Type Calculated
Formula Cell
Cell sensor Cels
Cell index 1
Logs As you wish
Repeat this, increasing the number, for as many cells as you have in your battery pack.
To have the minimum cell voltage available set the "Name" to something like CelM and "Cell index" to "Lowest".
Now all the sensors created may be used to fill Screens 1-4 further down on the same page. To display these screens when flying longpress PAGE from the startscreen.

[Kilrah]

Note that it has been done like this as in most cases it is not really useful to show all individual cells, lowest and delta tell you all you need to know.

Envoyé de mon SM-G920F en utilisant Tapatalk

[RightRudder]

It's been about 2 years since I did anything with my sky9x / Taranis. Life gets in the way of hobbies unfortunately. I left off at a beta version of companion 1.99 and r2281. A lot has changed! I upgraded to companion 2.1.7 and am trying to get everything working again with my models. I had a e-glider with an early version of openXvario which had a VFAS sensor using the data port on a D8R-II plus Rx and therefore the vario was built to use A2 on the Rx. I have used the discovery feature to get the telemetry values and I see them now on the telemetry page, but I used to display battery consumption and had some special functions to play a battery warning based on consumption. So I have to set up a calculated telemetry variable for Cnsp and one each for Alt and Vspd based on A2.

In Companion in the altimetry section I set the vario source as A2 and in the 'top bar' section I set altitude source also as A2 which made sense. Then I created sensor lines for Alt, Vspd, and Cnsp and set them to calculated. But now I only get a drop down list for certain calculations like add, average, min, max etc. I thought average was the only one which made sense but there has to be a way to scale and add an offset to the voltage which I can't figure out. Nothing shows up on the screen of the Taranis for these fields. What am I missing? I need to ask for help at this point. Is there a good source of documentation for how to configure this?

Joe

[RightRudder]

Update: I learned some more but something still seems not right.

I created a calculated sensor called Vspd and used A2 as the source, configured for averaging and auto offset and filter. This seems to work, although I can't say about the calibration, however when transferring between companion and Taranis or vice versa, the source is lost and replaced by --- . I created a calculated sensor called Alt configured for totalize and for sensor I used the Vspd units m and auto offset and filter. After reseting the telemetry and moving the model up and down the Altitude readings on the Tx accumulate as expected but the values are way too high. If I raise the model from the floor to ceiling the vario goes up and then settles to zero but in that time the altitude racks up to ~6000m. Adjusting the precision doesn't help. How do I scale the value?

Joe

[kdm]

Hi all, apologies for dropping off the thread, been ill since my last posting and offline, however I've been reading and doing some tests and will post more info either tomorrow or early next week, it is a challenge but, it's understanding the order of how you do things.

I'll try and include screen shots as well if I can work out how to do it, sorry I'm not a forum person, if not I'll use JPG's attached.

regards

Keith

[kdm]

Hi all, again apologies for slow response, however I've come a long way with my 2.1 telemetry since last update.

I've been playing with both my DJI F550 and Yak54 with the following FRSky Telemetry modules:

• FrSky FLVSS Smart Port LiPo Voltage Sensor
  FrSky GPS V2 Sensor with S.Port
  FrSky Vario - High Precision

All sensors on the F550 but only the GPS and Vario in the YAK54

I'm sure that it's been stated but just to reinforce, Telemetry does not auto discover until you connect the sensors to the receiver, power up the TX then RX and go into the Telemetry screen on the TX go to the telemetry menu page and click auto discover, then the TX finds the primary sensors which you can then use and customise to obtain the actual readings that you require. To have these sensors in Companion, you must download your TX models into Companion, you cannot manually add them.

To explain the above take a look at my F550 file, you will see that the first sensor that the TX discovered was the "Cels" variable, this is auto named so don't go playing around with it. if you add this to a telemetry screen it will show the total battery voltage.

then you will see
GSpd - coming from the GPS
SWR - Comes from the RX and still not sure what worth this is
RSSI - Obvious
RXBT - Receiver input voltage
GAlt - GPS Altitude
Date - does not seem to work
GPS - I believe brings my GPS coordinates over

Then we come on to "Calculated" variables, i.e. ones that I have defined which seem to port through a auto discovered variable to provide what you are looking for

cel1 through cel4 - You can name them whatever you like as long as its a max of 4 characters, these provide the individual cell voltages of the battery, you do not have to configure them as I've done, this was purely so I understood what was going on and will delete these lines soon

celm - again max four characters for the name and this is where it gets interesting, it's a calculated value, not custom as are the auto discovered ones, the next colum defines that it's for an individual cell and then the Cells Sensor is what auto discovered sensor it's derived from, then you choose whether its a specific cell or in the is case show the lowest cell voltage. These variables are then available in "logical switches" so it's simple to have a logical switch set to on when the lowest cell voltage falls to say 3.6 volts. you then have a Special function defined which when the logical switch turns on will play the "battery critical" track and as I do the value of the lowest cell.

dist - this again is my 4 letter label, its again calculated using the sub value of Dist in the GPS and this time the last value I've set to metres.

all of my variables are logged by ticking the end box, if you don't tick it they will not be logged.

So once they have been auto discovered on the TX and downloaded to Companion you can then define your own calculated variables in Companion, however I'm not there yet, I'm still doing everything on the TX as I still don't get all of the fields and what you can calculate from the custom variables and what you cannot.

One other thing that is worthy of note, for every variable both custom and calculated there is a max displayable and min displayable, as an example understand the following

RSSI will show the actual RSSI
RSSI- will show the minimum value that RSSI reached
RSSI+ will show the maximum value that RSSI reached

all of these can be reset with a Special Function during flight

Hope that helps and happy to continue this discussion as I'm intrigued by all of the settings that I currently do not understand.

I've read everything that I can find but am still looking for the "Telemetry bible" which details each actual setting and what / how it's actually used.

regards

Keith

[DCSipp]

I a running firmware 2.1.7. I just bought the FLVSS module and hooked up to the X8R. When I run "auto discover", I only get RSSI, SWR and RxBT. my flight controller is a Naze32 Funfly I am beginning to believe this is limitation of this FC ad is why I do not see Cels. The X8R is connected to the FC with SBUS using an inverter cable.
In CleanFlight, I only see UART 1 and 2, no soft serial ports.
I am hoping someone can confirm the limitations of the funfly or point me in the right direction.

Regards,
David

[Kilrah]

Do you have any telemetry connection between the FC and receiver?

Did you actually connect the battery balance cable to the FLVSS? You won't get data until then.

[kdm]

Hi DCSipp, I'm assuming that you have connected the FLVSS to the smart port of the X8R and then as Kilrah says to the battery balance cable?

once you do that and on the TX in the telemetry screen click on Discover sensors, you should see a new sensor "Cels", stop the Discover Sensors, then you can create "calculated" sensors for each battery cell, minimum cell etc.

[DCSipp]

Kilrah and kdm,
Thanks for the response. Yes the balance cable is on the battery and yes the FLVSS is connected to the smart port. Cels does not show up when I run discovery. I have an inverter between the X8R and the Naze32 FunFly. I'll erase everything and try again. Others ideas are appreciated.

David

[kdm]

hey DCSipp, first thing I'd do is to just have the RX, FLVSS and the battery connected, maybe plug one servo into the RX so that you can confirm it's working, then you should definitely see the Cels appear on a "Discover Sensors", if not then I think you have more of a challenge.

if it does appear, perhaps there is some sort of id number challenge that the Naze32 is causing, get it back to basics and then move forward from there.

let us know

[DCSipp]

kdm,
Copied the model and deleted all sensors. Ran discovery again and now Cels showed up. Thanks for taking the time to respond.
David

[kdm]

Pleasure David

[Silverback]

Just got this to work. Autodiscover does find Cels, the total pack voltage if the receiver and FLVSS are connected and working, but not CELL, the lowest individual Cel voltagel.
But "Cell" is there.
Having autodiscovered Cels go to "Add a new sensor" the next choice down.
Enter a name ,
Choose "Type" - "Calculated"
Then when you go through the choices in" Formula" you will actually find "Cell".
It will automatically blank the "Cell sensor" choice and set the "Cell index" to "lowest".
Exit and From that point Cell or the name you have given it can be added to a telemetry screen or I guess be used elsewhere,