I've had these components for 4 years:
Heli Nation Talon F7 with pit switch
Aikon AK32PIN  20x20 4in1 ESC (runs Bl-Heli 32)
Frame is Flight Club Neutron.

I need to reverse two of my motors before I can fly this thing. It's turning into a real hassle. The ESC is 4 years old and runs on BLHeli32. I tried to change the motor direction in Betaflight (3.3.? it's the current Betaflight) unsuccessfully, I mean it does not reverse the motor. So I am trying to use BLHeli 32, which was never a problem before. As I understand and after hours of this the BLHeli S which is online based is not for BLHeli 32 ESC's. I downloaded BLHeli 32 to my Mac but get errors saying my browser does not support it or Apple won't let me open it. I tried using BLHeli 32 or the configurator on my old Windows 7 PC but the "32" version gives me the error "supports v32.5 but ESC needs v32.6..." but I just downloaded the BLHeli suite... Or I get errors saying Windows 7 is no longer supported, no surprise there . The configurator reads the ESC but won't show me any data. Anywhoo, this is becoming a real mess. Any advice would be great!

I assume you mean that you installed Betaflight 4.4.2 on the FC (which is currently the latest version). There is a bug in that version which means the Motor Direction Wizard doesn't work. Try downgrading the Betaflight firmware to 4.4.1 or 4.4.0 then use the Motor Direction Wizard to change the direction of the required motors, then upgrade the firmware back to 4.4.2 again. If you've already configured a load of stuff in Betaflight, don't forget to save a "diff all" first before doing any firmware flashing.

are you using an old betaflight version and a new configurator? maybe there is a conflict which even causes the passthrough to fail?

if you use bf 3.5 on your quad as example, i would download the matching bf-configurator on github and give it a try

Without going into what version BF you're running on the flight controller, the bl32 suite should be able to help you.

They main issue with this suite is keeping it up to date.

Here is the official link to the bl32 suite, including the latest version for mac.

Releases · bitdump/BLHeli (github.com)

This should work and not give you an issue running on macOS.

I've found that keeping this app up to date definitely helps when configuring bl32 escs that are on varying firmware versions.

When using the app you need to make sure that only one esc is "selected" when programming different settings.  Save the setting change for that esc then move on to the next one you wish to change motor direction on.

@SnowLeopardFPV you are correct, it is Betaflight 4.4.2. My bad and I apologize for the confusion.
I will attempt this all again tomorrow using the suggestions above. And the first thing I will do is delete all the BLHeli stuff on my computer, it's mass confusion now with all these different versions. A problem I guess with following download links from years past on sites like Oscar Lang, etc.

A general observation/question regards motor direction issues.

Given all the confusion, firmware juggling, getting the right sequence (one ESC at a time, etc) and other traps, why is this firmware wrestling the recommended/go to way to direction change when swapping two of the three motor wires is often infinately easier and quicker?

Simply put, wires are already cut to different lengths. I never had a problem in past builds using BL Heli.
If I had known how much time and trouble would be consumed troubleshooting all this stuff I would have (and may in the future) done a proto build and cut the wires later.

FWIW this build has been ridiculous. Lots of bugs like motor 4 didn't work, I swapped it to other pads on ESC and it did, so not the motor, after much searching I found out there was a bug, I had to enter CLI commands to get motor 4 running. Now at one point BLHeli says there are only 3 ESC's. Great.
Now there is a bug in Betaflight 4.4.2 that won't let me use the motor reversing feature. It never ends, LOL.

(01-Nov-2023, 03:52 PM)husafreak Wrote: FWIW this build has been ridiculous. Lots of bugs like motor 4 didn't work, I swapped it to other pads on ESC and it did, so not the motor, after much searching I found out there was a bug, I had to enter CLI commands to get motor 4 running. Now at one point BLHeli says there are only 3 ESC's. Great.
Now there is a bug in Betaflight 4.4.2 that won't let me use the motor reversing feature. It never ends, LOL.

This is what you sign on for when doing a hobby that is almost running on the bleeding edge of development and especially when you prefer to run software that at best could be categorised as beta development level.  If you want stable and few bugs, run stable. If you want the latest and greatest features that you may not even need, run the very latest build.

We all signed up to this when we started building and flying.  Things don't work properly, software is buggy, the hardware is sometimes bad.  It's just how it is.

Hey that's cool! I fly everything, planes, helis, etc. I always tell my buddies who do not fly quads that you guys are major league problem solvers. My wife does crosswords and puzzles, I tell her this is my kind of puzzles. But I am usually building a kit or something very step by step. And I'm pretty lost when it comes to using computers. Anyway, what I am getting from you and some of my other threads is I could be running older, proven software. I didn't realize that. I am just sitting down and saying Oh this is the latest stuff I should use that. And since I don't really know what I'm doing the bugs are really confusing. If I get this quad in the air it will be a major achievement, I'll learn a lot.
Cheers!

People come on here pretty often and say they installed the latest BF and the quad won't fly. Generally most of us then ask if it worked on the version it came with and most the time they say yes. So we say revert back to it and go fly.

If you want a good reason why not to run the latest build, look up ICM20689 with SPI ELRS. It happened last year. AIO's with the ICM20689 gyro and SPI ELRS were getting bricked with 4.3.0_RC6, 7 and 8. Even worse, BetaFPV was shipping Meteor65, Meteor75 and Meteor85 whoops with a broken firmware preinstalled. In a semi bad way i did manage to buy a bunch of broken meteor65's and 75's on the cheap that only needed new FC's, but a lot of people had to RMA drones and even the drone shops in the UK didn't know about the problem. I emailed two of them to let them know about the issue and told them they could fix it by flashing 4.3.1 to them prior to selling them. They withdrew the FC's and drones. It's now fixed, but you can sometimes still come across the old FC's. If you do end up with one, boot it using the boot button and immediately check what fw is installed. If the quad model spins aimlessly in one direction, it's probably already broken and you may as well bin the FC.

Another one is older FrSky based HM AIO boards. They won't easily run 4.3 (thanks to people on here that helped me on that problem). BF 4.2.11 is the last fw that works for them. Specifically the HM Crazybee 12A AIO v3.1 with FrSky Diversity D8/16 , but possibly others as well. If you have an AIO with FrSky built in, try 4.2.11 if it doesn't work on 4.3 or 4.4.

So I would first see if it flies on whatever it came with, then start the tweaking on newer versions, but make sure you have that dump saved of the original fw and config so you can revert.

OK, some success. I loaded the latest BLHelisuite32 10.0.4.3 and was able to get it running on my Mac using the "control, click" method. I was able to reverse the direction of my motors. I got lots of error messages initially but figured it out. I was able to stay with Betaflight 4.4.2. Thank You everyone.

Unfortunately I am still not in the air though. The motors won't arm. In the modes tab on betaflight when I arm the quad (AUX1 on the Boxers latched switch) the box turns red instead of yellow and says "disabled". So, I'll be looking into that next. Note that if I use turtle mode I can run the motors in pairs with the joystick, yeah, I try everything, LOL.

(03-Nov-2023, 05:24 PM)husafreak Wrote: Unfortunately I am still not in the air though. The motors won't arm. In the modes tab on betaflight when I arm the quad (AUX1 on the Boxers latched switch) the box turns red instead of yellow and says "disabled". So, I'll be looking into that next. Note that if I use turtle mode I can run the motors in pairs with the joystick, yeah, I try everything, LOL.

For safety reason you can't arm the quad with a USB cable plugged in. That is what the red disabled status means on the Modes tab. Remove the USB cable from the FC and then try arming again (with the props OFF if doing that inside on the bench).

I checked the CLI and it said "ANGL CLI MSP" Doh! it was still set at 25 degrees in Betaflight and clever me had the quad supported in an angle vice at a greater angle. I set the max arming angle to 180 and it armed fine. Another step that a manual or step by step video tutorial would have told me but I am trying to do this on my own soooo.
It is kind of neat that I could/should have figured out when Turtle Mode worked and regular arming didn't because turtle mode bypasses the angle limit.

I got to fly it today and it flies great, I could not be happier! Thank you all so much. This was a huge challenge for me, maybe spent 20 hours or more, I think I picked a tough one for my first scratch build. Beside the frame of course. Cheers!

Pics or it didn’t happen, right?
Hmmm ? now I have to figure out how to load pics