The existing system in 2.0 and older is based on 2 old systems that imposed too many limitations compared to what today's equipment is capable of:
- The FrSky D system, which assumed a "frozen" environment with a given number of sensor types and count
- The 9X and its limited resources that required telemetry handling to be optimized to that system and tightly nested with the display and menus to save memory, making it very rigid with any modification being complex, not evolutive at all.
A few keypoints of the result:
- Each value sent down is treated as a separate "sensor" with its own properties (unit, decimal precision, ratio/offset) and options (auto offset, filtering, persistent storage at power off, logging enabled). Each sensor has its own user-defined name and keeps track of its own min/max value.
- In the case of the FrSky system, these sensors are auto-discovered anytime the radio and receiver/sensors are powered up.
- Sensors can be duplicated, so for example a given value e.g. altitude from the same vario sensor can be displayed/announced/logged simultaneously in different units, or with different options (absolute altitude and altitude above start point with auto or manual offset,...)
- Multiple physical sensors returning the same value are supported as long as there is a way to differentiate them. With the FrSky S-port system it means you can connect any number of identical sensors as long as you make sure to change the IDs of sensors with the FrSky SBUS servo channel changer (SCC) as required so each ID is unique in the smart port chain (explained in the sensor's and SCC's manuals). If you want to measure individual motor currents of your octocopter with 8 FCS-40A sensors, no problem.
- "Calculated" virtual sensors can be manually created to combine values or extract extra data. Values can be added, averaged or multiplied, the minimum or maximum of a set of up to 4 values van be extracted. This also takes care of "special cases" like calculating GPS distance (2D or 3D), getting the value of a particular cell of a lipo cell sensor, calculating mAh consumption etc. For example Power can be calculated easily by multiplying the related voltage and current, total voltages of multiple lipo cell sensors can be added to get the total voltage of series-wired packs, the minimum cell of each of them can be extracted and the lowest of all can be found using the Minimum function.
- Each sensor can be reset individually with a special function, so no more losing all your min/max values when you just want to reset altitude offset to start point.
2.1 is still pretty much in alpha state but the new system is available to try for motivated testers who understand how important it is to back up their firmware and settings in the 2.1 nightly builds. Most of the sensor handling is finished and should cover all previous use cases and a lot more. There are still a few broken things (e.g voice announcement units) and unimplemented things (e.g. sensor loss warnings). Any feedback and issue reports are welcome, we've certainly overlooked a few usage cases.
Note that due to pretty much having nothing in common with the old system all settings related to telemetry will be lost when going from 2.0 to 2.1. Model conversion isn't finished in the nightly builds anyway, best to test with a blank eeprom.
A few screenshots: