Help! TinyHawk Freestyle II FRSky to DSMX?

[sprzout]

You dont use expo on quads EVER. You manipulate Super Rate in betaflight to get the curves you desire. What happens is RC Rate without Super Rate can be insane the entire range of the sticks. Super Rate mellows that out a bit differently then EXPO does. If you add expo to all that your center stick gets deceptively mushy and the outer parts get insane. Find your curve with Super Rate. Also keep in mind you will need to lower RC rate a touch so you dont end up in the 1200 dps range.

Keep in mind (maybe not so important on tiny quads) you set your rates up first THEN tune your quad and yes contrary to you tube wisdom.. betaflight stock tune is lame. Its extremely gimped so people dont fry their crappy bang good gear as soon as they arm. To an experienced pilot betaflight stock tune is akin to flying a wet noodle. The pros hype it up because they get something in return for doing so. With that in mind a separate tune for each of the three rate settings you can put on a switch will be better for the longevity of your gear. For now sort out your rates and switches then you can work into tuning so its not so overwhelming.

I think the default tune has its benefits as a base line, to make sure that things are at least working, and it's something to start from. I think that's why so many tuning PIDs videos are confusing - they don't give you a STARTING point to go from, just "it's different for everyone", which isn't really helpful. I agree that the stock tunes are garbage, but if you don't know where to at least start from and go up/down from there, how do you know what's bad?

(This reminds me - I've got to make some changes to my PIDs for the Glide Freestyle I've got - thing feels great for banging through the gates, but it does not want to roll/flip easily in acro)

 

[PsyBorg]

@sprzout Oh stock tunes are totally flyable. That wasnt the point I was making. The point was more like.. its not the best thing since sliced bread and an end all be all to perfection. So many of these "pro" pilots have always preached set you best rates and learn how to fly on insane flippy floppies rates and just suck it up on crashes. They come across and dont mention to the newer audience that you CAN turn down rates on any size quad and start like you are flying a tiny whoop. Just drop pitch and roll dps down to mid 50dps and yaw at about 600 and you can make anything move a millimetre at a time and need to use nearly full stick deflection to get it to move yet not be so jerky and aggressive as stock set up on auto level mode with high rates fighting to break free of the auto level to move then slamming back to level like a dog on a chain running full speed until there is no more chain.

I will hopefully have a stable and reliable computer after the first of the month and I can get off my lazy butt and post all the things I did on my 3 inch 4s build. that way I can gather screenies of every page and setting and go in depth how it all works and how to manipulate it to do your bidding for new and old pilots alike.

 

[kuhlrunner]

I tried this, HOWEVER, the black wire is in the correct position, as there's only 3 pads there. (+)(-)(S), if the black wire is placed on the dot, it would be on the signal pad. If that's where it's supposed to go then maybe that's why mine doesn't work, but my rx is bound to my DX9 and the light on the rx is steady on wired as shown above, with the wires. I'm not seeing any movement in betaflight in receiver section, with or without the battery plugged in, I have also gone online and registered my SERIAL rx, and updated the software and I STILL can't get this little thing to work with my radio. I even tried to solder the signal wire from the serial rx to the RX1 pad...no dice, also tried to solder it on the pad after I removed the cap on the 2 pads. Still, no dice. I went into config on BF and it is set to Spektrum, then SPEKTRUM serial. Still NO DICE :-@ I'm about to give up and send these little things back. I wish I could get them running because they look like they would tear up the sky.


EDIT:

I could never get the SPM4650 serial race rx to work, no matter what rx port/UART/Spektrum stting I used. I had just a regular SPM9745 and it worked like a charm! Now I just have to return these two serial race rx and get more SPM9745 satellite rx!

@pkm_heliman are you talking about this receiver?

It sounds like you figured out the problem this thread is addressing! Would you mind going into detail on where you soldered it, how you set it up on Betaflight, binding prodedure, etc? Maybe include some pictures? I think lots of us here would really appreciate it! I'm about ready to return my other receiver and finally solve this problem (I've been struggling with this since early September)! Congrats on figuring it out!

 

[kuhlrunner]

After some research I'm still not sure if the SPM9745 shown above would work. It sounds to me like it's just another receiving point for other Spektrum receivers. I'd really appreciate someone letting me know what a solution to this problem is, my quad has been sitting on my workbench for weeks. @pkm_heliman could you provide some insight into this? It seems like you're the only one here besides @"Corpse" who's got this transition to work, in one way or another...
Thanks!

 

[Geeks2you]

Tonight I dove head first into this mod to be able to use my Spektrum DX8 G1 with my (brand new) TH2 Freestyle RTF. As you may know, the TX that comes with the set is pretty vanilla, and I wanted to use my nice TX. Wanted to address a few issues within this post to better clarify the process. Thanks to "Corpse" for assisting with the (+)(-) soldering clarifications.

On the (+)(-) issue where there is a resistor bridged across the DSMX pads, "Corpse" mentioned that he had just soldered along each side of the resistor without removing it. I did the exact same thing and it works correctly. This will provide a 3.3v lead. You need a very fine tip iron that is not super hot to ensure that you do not gap the solder across pads. Please forgive the following potato image, but did not want to take the quad back apart just for this photo.....

As for the Brown signal wire (or whatever color your signal wire is), it will depend on the RX that you are using. Make sure you look at the serial signal protocol that the RX uses. There have been a few posts in this thread that state that the new SPM4650 serial race RX would not work. The issue is that RX uses the new SRXL2 protocol which is a high speed bi-directional serial signal. In this case, you need to use a TX pad for the signal wire (TX1 or TX2). There is a Spektrum video that speaks to this issue directly that I found and will link below as to why. If you are using a standard Spektrum serial RX or a SRXL RX, you will still use the RX1 or RX2 pads for the signal wire. The BF config will depend on the RX as well that you are using. For my setup, I used pad TX1, and set the UART1 to Serial RX in ports, then in the Configuration settings I set the Receiver to Serial-Based -> Spektrum SRXL2. Again this is for the Spektrum 4650 Micro Race RX.

After you set these items and restart, go into the Receiver tab and check your mappings, reversals, and travel trim settings.
I hope that this helps to clarify a few of the items within this post that needed clarification. If you have any questions, feel free to drop me a msg and I can help where possible.

 

[pkm_heliman]

I did get the spm4651t to work like a charm. The biggest problem was that I couldn't see the SRXL2 tab in the set up tab in beta flight. Turns out you need 4.0.3 or above to use the SRXL2 protocol. I like the SPM4651T because it has full telemetry and so I can see the RSSI in my goggles plus it has a bind button so you don't have to deal with cli commands to put it into bind mode. You can also solder the signal wire to the ground pad (short the signal wire to ground) and it will put a RX into bind mode. All good and working now...

 

[kuhlrunner]

Thank you, everyone, for your help! I was finally able to get my receiver working and my drone flying. Thanks especially to @Geeks2you for the detailed explanation.