Thank you for your post, it's a great insight on how you do things, and certainly will learn something from it. I have invested in one of those microscopes with an lcd screen on it, I use it more examine my soldering after I have completed my soldering. There has been a couple of times I had to clean up my soldering mess as it I power the flight controller there would have been smoke.

I seem to be a much better  and quicker at soldering now, sort of forced practice with building drones.
The soldering paste I have been using

It might not be the best, but has been working for me, although I may review that as I learn new things.

I notice you have been using Liquid Electrical Tape as on your antenna mount, and you have mentioned you may be upgrading your antenna, never tried this yet but how are you planning to clean that Liquid Electrical Tape off, when you will be upgrading your antenna?

I just realised something, I may know the reason that your Betaflight installation didn't work probably on your flight controller -- as this happened to me when I was flashing Betafpv Meteor85.

This is what happened to me, I purchased a BNF Betafpv Meteor85 Walksnail edition, when I received it it had Betaflight 4.3 on it, and with Betaflight 4.3 the OSD is a bit shit, as Betaflight 4.3 does not support HD OSD I tried to flash Betaflight 4.4, and the flashing partly failed -- I have to force the flight controller into DFU mode via the button on the flight controller, then I tried to flash the original version, and that partially succeeded, but the drone would not ARM, I reach out to BetaFPV support, they got me to do some tests, and they suggested that my flight controller was faulty, so I send the drone back to the supplier who sold me the drone. The supplier did manage to flash Betaflight 4.3 back to the drone, I asked him what did he do, he said he just connected it to his laptop and the flashing just worked, I asked him can you flash Betaflight 4.4 and that failed for him so he flashed 4.3 back to the quad, as we thought at the time this is an SPI ELRS version, and it simply not compatible with 4.4, and I got him to send that quad back.. and yes it would arm on 4.3 but there was a fair bit amount of betaflight missing, O.K. with experimenting, and trying to flash Betaflight 4.4 I notice an error message, none of our flashing attempts were actually fully completing, I then experimented with different USB ports and leads till I got 4.4 to flash I should have been playing attention to the error messages. What I was amazed about that a "partially" installed betaflight could still work -- but work not real good with lots of issues.

O.K. here is what I think the fault is, when flashing a flight controller with an Walksnail VTX connected to a BEC on the flight controller it a huge power draw when flashing , and it will cause the flashing to end before the installation has fully completed, and in your case your Betaflight may not be complete hence were errors when flying -- but why would Quicksilver work? I think that might be a smaller OS, and you may get the whole of QS on the flight controller before the fail point.

O.K. maybe for you should stick with Quicksilver, but if you ever to want to try Betafight with your FC maybe try un-soldering the Walksnail VTX before doing flashing. Once the flashing has completed successfully then resolder the Walksnail VTX back to the FC.

For the 1S Lite VTX, I like to keep the original plug that comes with it, and solder on a connector on the AIO side. It does add a little extra wiring and maybe 0.5g to the build, but for maintenance or some boards that power the 5v rail when you plug in USB that gives the option to disconnect the VTX. If you are powering by an external BEC, it should not power up when you connect USB only (ie for flashing). But for external BECs you can find ones with an enable pin, and connect it to a spare pad (like LED) and use PINIO to turn on/off the VTX by a switch.

Which version of the 1-2S AIO does your 85 come with? The 2022 SPI board (think it shows v2.2). If it is Frsky, then I believe they used a custom hex and you can NOT upgrade it, but for ELRS you can download the latest hex off their website they have one for 4.4.  If you are not able to flash their file, you must change the option from RELEASE to DEVELOPMENT on BF configurator.

Quote:Pay attention, For the SPI ELRS 2.4G version, ONLY the Betaflight firmware 4.3.0 and up start to support this BMI270 gyro. For the SPI Frsky version, DO NOT flash the other firmware. We have already built our own firmware betaflight_4.2.11_BETAFPVF411RX for SPI Frsky RX version to support BMI270 gyro. Please check the below link to download the firmware.
Download the firmware and CLI dump file for the F4 1S 12A FC board (ELRS and Frsky).

Cyberess, thats an interesting thought mate, i appreciate you going to the effort to help diagnose the issue i had with bf on this quad.

I started with the same type of flux as well, works well, better than flux core solder by itself. I found the syringe version just more accurate in placing the flux on those small pads.

Interesting take on the bf flashing issue. Was that phaser, buzz or nextfpv you were deqling with? They're all great blokes that help heaps with a high level of customer service. Although Rhys from phaser is known to he a bit short in his comms, lol. He's great and given me lots of support over the years, especially with 3d printing and servicing of a prusa 3d printer my work bought from phaser.

In the end the issue i believe was due to a version of bluejay on the escs not tqlking well with bf. Quicksilver (i think) implements some differnet dshot (esc protocol) commands differently and thats why it worked for me.

The liquid electrical tape does get into the smaller cracks on the u.fl connector but is doesn't create an open circuit on the small signal male.pin. when removing it comes off rather easily and clean.

Cheers,
ph2t.

(22-Jan-2024, 04:14 PM)mstc Wrote: For the 1S Lite VTX, I like to keep the original plug that comes with it, and solder on a connector on the AIO side.  

mstc, thankyou for your reply,

What I have been dealing is an BetaFPV BNF  with an Walksnail VTX as from factory, and it came with the VTX already soldered to the AIO, and the BEC that they had connected is powered while the USB is plugged in.

Still your reply is interesting, as the 1S Walksnail VTX comes with the wires soldered to the VTX, and a male plug on the end of wiring, and the AIO I have been using have no plug for the VTX, so what female plug have you been using and where did you get it from?

Quote:Which version of the 1-2S AIO does your 85 come with? The 2022 SPI board (think it shows v2.2). If it is Frsky, then I believe they used a custom hex and you can NOT upgrade it, but for ELRS you can download the latest hex off their website they have one for 4.4.  If you are not able to flash their file, you must change the option from RELEASE to DEVELOPMENT on BF configurator.

Oh I think you might have read my post wrong, I have Betaflight 4.4 fully operational on my Meteor85, and the Metor85 is an SPI ELRS 2.4G setup  -- and it is fully compatible with Betaflight 4.4 -- the problem I was having was incomplete flashing of Betaflight regardless of the version of Betaflight being used.

Note: the Meteor85 is SPI ELRS and the Meteor75 is serial ELRS

(22-Jan-2024, 11:05 PM)ph2t Wrote: <snip>
Interesting take on the bf flashing issue. Was that phaser, buzz or nextfpv you were deqling with? They're all great blokes that help heaps with a high level of customer service. Although Rhys from phaser is known to he a bit short in his comms, lol. He's great and given me lots of support over the years, especially with 3d printing and servicing of a prusa 3d printer my work bought from phaser.
<snip>

It was BuzzFPV, I was dealing with, and the support was great, I have dealt with all the vendor that you have listed PhaserFPV is where my Bassliine came from, and where I purchased my latest Walksnail VTX from, great pricing and great support. NextFPV, batteries and Goggle strap, Mantisfpv is where my Rapid fire module, I have purchased a lot of stuff from all over the place, including a lot off Aliexress

Ok I think its terrible that they would setup a BNF where the USB powers a hungry digital VTX. I guess modern USB ports are robust enough to not blow out like old ones used to. Having said that, I have probably more than a dozen Betafpv 1-2S boards (from v1 through their AT32) running in various builds, probably because they were the cheapest ELRS AIOs back then.

For the plug, I only found the SMD connector for the SH1.0 size. It is a pain to solder, but works fine. I put a drop of hotglue and shrink wrap it to secure the wires and despite being a little ugly, it has been pretty reliable so far. You may be able to find a breakout board, I think Adafruit has one for their i2c plug, or I actually went and had a batch made. It was my first time designing a PCB so I would make it smaller next time. I have some extras if you are stateside and wanted to try one. Otherwise the Betafpv HD only ELRS AIOs have a vista plug with a jumper to set it to provide 5v, allowing the WS Lite VTX to plug directly into the AIO. For the V3 boards you can run up to 3S voltage, so other AIOs with the DJI plug would work too as long as you don't run more than 3S. Just make sure you line up the pins correctly when plugging in the 4P plug into the 6P socket.


https://intofpv.com/t-help-design-a-simp...#pid201667

And looking at my old build, actually the Betafpv v2.0 1-2S boards 5v BEC was too weak to power the VTX and I had to add an external BEC.

(23-Jan-2024, 05:19 AM)Cyberess Wrote: and it is fully compatible with Betaflight 4.4 -- the problem I was having was incomplete flashing of Betaflight regardless of the version of Betaflight being used.

So i'm not 100% sure this is the reason, but I heard or read somewhere that the firmware size for 4.4 is too big to flash to the older boards. But you can strip away all the crap from the firmware that you don't need to cut a more custom, smaller firmware to flash to make it work. Don't ask me how you do that as I don't use it personally. All my stuff flies well on 4.3.1 so i won't go out of my way to intentionally break perfectly good working quads for features I have no use for.

(23-Jan-2024, 05:19 AM)Cyberess Wrote: Note: the Meteor85 is SPI ELRS and the Meteor75 is serial ELRS

My M85 uses V2.0 (2021 edition off the top of my head with ICM20689). The 2.1 uses BMI270 and SPI-ELRS. The 2.2 uses BMI270 and Serial ELRS. The stuff beyond that uses ICM42688 which is a real POS and best avoided if you want an easier life.

(24-Jan-2024, 12:33 AM)Pathfinder075 Wrote: All my stuff flies well on 4.3.1 so i won't go out of my way to intentionally break perfectly good working quads for features I have no use for.

For "me" I can say that the Meteor85 was not a good setup as from factory
Reasons:

• For SPI, Betaflight 4.3 only supports ELRS version 2.x -- All my other quads and radios are on ELRS3.x so I updated to Betaflight 4.4
  
• Betaflight 4.3 does not have a setup screen for OSD HD elements and I did not like the way that the OSD screen looked as with 4.3 and from factory 
  
• All my other quads at the time were running Betaflight 4.4.1
  

At the time April last year, I was out to learn things, and I am super happy that I upgraded at the time, I certainly ended up with a better understanding, a tune that I was happy with, since that time I have shared my dumps and diffs with other people who wanted ELRS ver 3, only in early November did Betafpv released their official diff betaflight 4.4

All my stuff flies really well on ELRS 2, so that's all I use. I also don't use HD.

But it sounds like you are someone who would benefit from BF 4.4, as you are using newer components that need the newer features. None of my kit needs them or would benefit from them. I still fly 100% analog, ELRS 2 and mainly SPI AIO's (and the odd handful of non SPI ELRS boards use 2.5.1 as well).

As to SPI ELRS 3, there was a Betaflight fork of 4.3.2 with ELRS 3 somewhere on Github. It literally had the same features as 4.3.2, but had ELRS 3 support baked in. I have the hex files somewhere for the targets I would need. But I don't have any use for it. I still run 4.3.1 on most of my stuff and have been using QS 0.9.1 more and more, on newer builds.

I will probably move to ELRS 3 when I get a new radio, later this year and then will (more than likely) take everything I own over to Quicksilver. In many ways the only thing stopping me doing it now is one small function that QS doesn't have that I like having, the "low power on disarm" VTX function in Betaflight. If QS had that i would permanently convert everything over to it. I will ask the devs if it's possible to add it, if not I might delve into the code and see if I can fork a version with it added that basically set's vtx power to 25mW on disarm and max on arm. It's a highly useful thing if you drop a quad with an expensive, powerful VTX and have to spend 10-20 mins finding it on a hot day.