Naze32 Fails to Communicate with Cleanflight

[Na1577]

To start, I am very new with flight controllers. I recently purchased a Naze32 Rev5 board from amazon. I downloaded all of the latest drivers as well as Cleanflight version 2.1.0 for Windows. After a lot of trouble, I shorted the bootloader pins and successfully flashed version 2.1.0 for NAZE on cleanflight. After clicking connect, I got the error message "No configuration received within 10 seconds, communication failed." Thinking version 2.1.0 was unstable, I successfully flashed version 2.0.5 for NAZE, but got the same result as before.

I am connecting the Naze32 board to my PC with a micro USB cable, which appears as COM 3. While connected to the PC, the blue bootloader light is active, as well as the other LEDs blinking frequently. I haven't soldered any pins onto the board, so I don't think I am short circuiting. If there is any information that could help me figure out why the board cannot be connected, please help me out.

Could it be a board malfunction? If so, are there any other newer boards that you guys could recommend that are user friendly and accept PPM input?

 

[cranialrectosis]

I do love my Naze32 rev5 on my WarpQuad. At one time I had 6 copters running those boards.

What PC OS are you using and does your OS recognize the board? I.E. if it's Windows you should hear a chime when you connect the USB.

If not, did you reboot your PC after installing the CP210x driver?

Your questions are common if not frustrating. Most likely there is a simple fix.

 

[Na1577]

Thanks for the quick reply! I am using Windows. Where exactly should I go to make sure that Windows is recognizing the board?

 

[cranialrectosis]

Device manager.

Windows should chime when you connect the board. You should hear three beeps from your PC whenever you connect and two when you disconnect. If this isn't happening be sure you have installed the proper CP210x driver for your OS and reboot. After your PC starts, connect the USB to the NAZE and you should hear those chimes.

If you still do not, try another USB port. If you have USB 3 on your PC, try a USB 2 port.

The most common issues in connecting are drivers and USB cables.

 

[Na1577]

While I don't get any beeps from the computer, device manager shows the connection as "Silicon Labs CP210x USB to UART Bridge COM3." I have restarted the computer, with no result. It still doesn't connect.
I am running Windows 10 64 bit, so I installed the Windows 10 CP210x drivers online. I ran the CP210xVCPInstaller_x64 that was included in the drivers .zip file, along with a computer restart.
I only have one USB port on this computer, so the only option I have is COM3.

Is there anything else I could try?

 

[cranialrectosis]

Do you have another USB cable?

Not all cables are the same and the wrong type of cable is root cause for similar problems almost half the time they come up. Still you were able to flash so the cable theory is shaky to me.

Does Windows device manager show the port working and using the proper driver, not some generic Windows USB driver? Not hearing the chimes is a red flag telling me the driver is not working.

 

[Na1577]

Where in device manager should I check for the board? How can I validate that the port is working and using the right CP210x driver?

I'm not sure why I was able to flash the board, but now I am unable to connect. Are the CP210x drivers required to flash the board? If so, I'd assume that the drivers are working.

 

[ElectriSean]

there are 2 drivers required, one to flash the board and on for normal connections. Try running the driver fixer from this page:
https://impulserc.com/pages/downloads

 

[Na1577]

I have downloaded the ImpulseRC Driver Fixer from the link you gave. I plugged in my Naze32 Rev5 into COM3 on my PC. After clicking run, the program is continually “Searching for flight controller.” I let it run for 3 minutes with no result. What seems to be the problem?

Thanks for trying to help guys, I am just too new at this to really understand flight controllers.

 

[cranialrectosis]

Did you reboot windows after running the driver fixer?

 

[Na1577]

I have not rebooted Windows. I have looked in device manager and found under the "Ports (COM and LPT)" section the driver labeled "Silicon Labs CP210x USB to UART Bridge (COM3)." Does this mean the drivers are properly installed?

If not, should I reboot Windows and retry the driver fixer?
If so, could the board be faulty?

I purchased the board here, is it possible the board uses different drivers?
https://www.amazon.com/USAQ-Naze32-...1517683673&sr=8-1-spons&keywords=Naze32&psc=1

 

[ElectriSean]

That is the correct driver. When you flashed the board, did you do a full chip erase? If not, maybe try that.

 

[Na1577]

When flashing the board, I selected no reboot sequence and full chip erase. I'm really at a loss as to what is going wrong.

 

[Na1577]

Well, I've found no solution for this Naze32 board. Instead, I've bought a Crius MultiWii v2.6 that connects easily to my PC and is programmed with Arduino. Hope no one else has this problem.

 

[makattack]

Have you tried flashing betaflight to the naze32 you have? While CF 2.1.0 should work, it doesn't hurt to try it on the Betaflight software, which currently still supports the naze32 (but won't in the next major release). CF2.1 is itself a fork of BF2.0 so you might as well try the latest of a different fork just in case.

I would probably try to spend more time getting the naze32 working with either CF or BF rather than muck around with the older MultiWii stuff. There are far fewer people using that these days and far fewer who can support it because those of us with experience with it haven't touched it in years (nor has the developers: https://github.com/multiwii/multiwii-firmware/commits/upstream_shared last update was in 2016 to bump the version number... but no other commits since)

It'll still work, and will actually fly well, but it's actually much harder to setup than the newer *flight stuff running on the 32bit STM microcontrollers vs the 8bit one in the MultiWii.

I suppose there's value if you want to contribute to the codebase for MultWii for your own education, but there's nothing about baseflight/cleanflight that prevents that either and arguably, the codebase is much better with *flight compared to multiwii.

 

[Daniel Kezar]

i havent used cf with that board but im just wondering, have you had cf experience before? if not then did you make sure to get all the drivers? one of the drivers is weird to install.

 

[PsyBorg]

From what I remember with the Naze32 boards I worked with back when I was messing with my Versacopter and modding as it evolved was I had to have two drivers. One to talk to it thru the gui and one to be able to flash it. These were the CP210 drivers and a driver called VCP 1.4. I even still have both of them sitting on my desktop hehe. I would do like others say and try Betaflight before Cleanflight though. With that you should be able to get that working with just Zadig or the ImmersionRC driverfixer tool.

 

[Jesse Dupreez]

To start, I am very new with flight controllers. I recently purchased a Naze32 Rev5 board from amazon. I downloaded all of the latest drivers as well as Cleanflight version 2.1.0 for Windows. After a lot of trouble, I shorted the bootloader pins and successfully flashed version 2.1.0 for NAZE on cleanflight. After clicking connect, I got the error message "No configuration received within 10 seconds, communication failed." Thinking version 2.1.0 was unstable, I successfully flashed version 2.0.5 for NAZE, but got the same result as before.

I am connecting the Naze32 board to my PC with a micro USB cable, which appears as COM 3. While connected to the PC, the blue bootloader light is active, as well as the other LEDs blinking frequently. I haven't soldered any pins onto the board, so I don't think I am short circuiting. If there is any information that could help me figure out why the board cannot be connected, please help me out.

Could it be a board malfunction? If so, are there any other newer boards that you guys could recommend that are user friendly and accept PPM input?

I have just hit the same problem,I got a secondhand Naze 32 rev 5 on an old 5in quad,
ofter quite a lot of effort to get newer firmware onit , and the RX set up.
CF suddenly stopped connecting to it,I have tried another laptop and it also does not connect toit

 

[Jesse Dupreez]

and if i try to re flash it it says "Failed to open serial port"

 

[Jesse Dupreez]

ah yes, I switched of the UART1