Hi Folks,

I hope this is an easy question and somebody can help me out with my first build.  I am using LDARC KK Super Tower(30.5*30.5mm) as my flight controller (http://ldarc.com/en/pd.jsp?id=141#_pp=2_944) and I have the new Runcam Micro Eagle with remote control (it has an OSD for configuration).

The question I have is how to hook up the camera to the flight controller.  The flight controller has 3 hardware UARTs.  UART 1 is used for Smarport.  Since I do not use a Taranis radio I tried hooking up the camera to this UART but I can not bring up the menu.  I have triple checked the connections and that Betaflight has it set to Runcam under peripherals and I can't get the menu to work.  I have seen some where they talk about inverted UART and think UART1 might, could that be the issue?  UART 3 is used for the OSD for the VTX and set to IRC Tramp and works flawlessly and UART 6 is for my SBUS receiver. 

Is it possible to get the camera menu to work?

Thanks in advance,

Ted

EDIT (02 April 2019): The below advice is not actually relevant due to the camera having TX/RX camera control pins. See the other posts below this one.

You have two options. Build your own capacitor/resistor circuit, or use a dedicated camera control board. There's not really much point in me regurgitating what Oscar has already written in some of his blog posts so have a read of the following which should give you all the information you need

https://oscarliang.com/fpv-camera-control-fc

https://oscarliang.com/runcam-camera-control-adapter

First off, which Micro Eagle do you have. The one with TX/RX on the back or the one that say Menu/ground?

It has TX/RX.

Just for some testing I attached the camera to UART3 and it works fine. But if I do that I lose the ability to control my VTX. The ideal situation is to somehow get it to work off of UART1.

So it looks like UART 1 TX has an inversion circuit on it, otherwise it would not with SmartPort. It doesn't specifically say that in the FC description. Let's assume that UART 1 TX is inverted. That means you have two options. Made an inversion circuit to uninverted the inverted signal. Very confusing and not worth the effort.

This is what I would do. Leave the camera control on UART3. Made UART1 RX pin into softserial TX 1. If you need help, post your "resource" from CLI. Wire you VTX control there. You should be all set.

(02-Apr-2019, 03:28 AM)tbirg Wrote: It has TX/RX.

From your original description ("it has an OSD for configuration"), I assumed you had the camera with the OSD Menu and Ground connection pins. Sorry for any confusion.

Just follow the advice that Voodoo has given.

Snow and Voodoo. Thanks for all the help. I really appreciate it.

Unfortunately I think I am screwed. The flight controller is an AIO stack including the VTX so I can’t switch my VTX wire to UART1. After your post I did some digging where they use soft serial for telemetry and it looks like they can invert that using the CLI.

I am going to play around some more and see what I can do. I will post the results when I get to it.

This FC has very confusing documentation. Example, the SBUS and DSMX goes to the same signal pin on the FC. This is not possible on a F4 FC. One protocol is inverted and one is not.

You still have a few free pins to convert to softserial. Put VTX back on UART3 TX. Use UART3 RX for softserial 1 RX. Use UART1 RX for softserial 1 TX.