I have had a never ending list of hurdles on my first quad build. I probably should have bought my armattan straight from the manufacturer and been flying already. But, I am here, and I have learned a TON, but still need some help to get in the air. 

I had big troubles with BOTH of my XRacer F303s connecting to the ESCs (Aikon 30a BLHeli-S). I couldn't do the motor test (spin up) when plugged into a storage battery and following all steps. I ordered a different FC, the Motolab Cyclone and soldered it up. Instantly the new FC let me spin the motors up in the Motors tab of BetaFlight. I think I am set. I go to BLHeli to reverse two of the motors but then BLHeli pumps out the error message (attached). I have restarted the computer, leaving Chrome and BetaFlight closed, tried both of my USBs and no fix. One thing to note, I am using Wine on my Mac to run BLHeli and I am not sure if this could be a problem.

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And, I cannot reverse two of the motor wires since they are too short to swap over.

I am using BLHeli with Wine on a Mac, and you do have a couple of extra steps to get passthrough working with Cleanflight/Betaflight.

Here is a little tutorial I did: http://intofpv.com/t-programming-blheli-...t-on-a-mac

Let me know if it works for you.

^ Great tutorial Scotty

is COM1 the correct com port?

(13-Aug-2016, 11:55 AM)Oscar Wrote: ^ Great tutorial Scotty

is COM1 the correct com port?

I added COM3 and COM4.  If he follows the tutorial, he should pick COM3 when done.

I've boxed the necessary commands in Terminal:  the "cd" command puts you in the correct subdirectory.  the "ln -s" commands create the actual com3 and com4 links to the appropriate serial devices.  Then in BLHeli, you choose COM3 from the dropdown.  [The other commands (ls -l) just show a list of the current devices in that subdirectory.]

I followed your tutorial step for step, but blindly. You mentioned, "You will need to know the serial ports that CleanFlight uses on your Mac," but I am not sure how to do that. I got the white squares but the "--------" on the ESC info before when using the XRacer. Now that I am using the Cyclone FC I am unable to get the blank squares because I get the same error that I posted earlier - except that I get it on any com port that I try.

(13-Aug-2016, 09:52 PM)mwsenoj Wrote: I followed your tutorial step for step, but blindly. You mentioned, "You will need to know the serial ports that CleanFlight uses on your Mac," but I am not sure how to do that. I got the white squares but the "--------" on the ESC info before when using the XRacer. Now that I am using the Cyclone FC I am unable to get the blank squares because I get the same error that I posted earlier - except that I get it on any com port that I try.

I'm not familiar with the Cyclone, but if you can communicate with it with BetaFlight, then it has to have the correct drivers installed.  Here's a snapshot of mine (I have a flip32 FC).



Notice that I am not connected here.  My serial device for communicating with BetaFlight is shown in the highlighted box (in my case /dev/cu.SLAB_USBtoUART).  If you have Auto-Connect turned on, it may not show this when you plug in.  That's OK, just press "disconnect" and it should show the serial device you were using.  NOTE: it might be either /dev/cu.<something> or /dev/tty.<something> .  That's fine, but whatever you have there is what you enter for the "ln  -s" commands above - it requires two:  cu.something and tty.something as I showed.

I suppose it's possible that the Cyclone doesn't support pass-through, but I suspect you just need the proper serial ports linked.  If you had BLHeli working in wine (for programming your esc's one at a time via an adapter), then I think this should work.

Good luck, and let me know how you get on.
Scotty

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One more thing.  If you already created the links as I showed, then you will need to use "ln  -sf" for the command (in order to replace them - the "f" is for "force").

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One more one more thing.  If you are "Connected" in BetaFlight, it will not work.  "Disconnect" (but leave the USB cable plugged in to the FC), and then launch BLHeli.

I figured out what was wrong with my original FC, rookie mistake. Once I switched back, BLHeli worked right away! Thanks for the help! It is very appreciated