Wrong Flight Controller

[LionFishSlayer]

So awhile back I decided I wanted to build my own from scratch (zmr250) went gung ho on banggood and ordered a ton of parts. I thought I ordered a naze32 flight controller (banggood had the title naze 32 upgrade.. blah blah blah.. didnt read any further, browsed over the specs.. add to cart) Turns out its an SP racing F3 board.. I have been doing some reading and am a little confused if this is actually a version of naze32 or is it completely different? Any good? better? why? I assume I just opened a big can of worms but any input is appreciated.

 

[Craftydan]

Better.

The Naze32 is an F1 processor in the STM32 series, the SPF3 is an F3 processor -- a more advanced version. This gives you a bit more processing overhead, spare memory (small built-in blackbox) and quite a bit of the "you can have A, but you'll need to disable B" goes away -- it's all available, all at the same time.

What wire goes where will change (If you haven't read the manual, you might want to), but once you hit the configurator, it's pretty much the same.

I'd call this a "Happy Accident"

 

[LionFishSlayer]

Thanks Craftydan, my first zmr I bought used and already set up so I basically just ordered mostly the same parts to build a new one with the exception of trying to "upgrade" old one has flip32 so I was going for the real deal naze32 looks like I accidentally went one better.. the receiver I ordered the same thing frsky dr4 2 since it has that ppm for using only one wire.. I assume the F3 board will be ok with that? Also, I ordered much better esc's and motors as I want to try out 4s.. question, can it be easily set up so that you could run 3 or 4s if you wanted?

 

[PsyBorg]

Yes as long as the motors and esc's you chose will handle 4s. My Versacopter is upgraded to do both.

BTW I too upgraded to an SPF3 controller. Be wary as there are a ton of clones. Wiring is a tad different. Easy way to tell is most of the rip off clones messed up the buzzer set up. If you plug a buzzer in and it buzzes full time then you have a clone. You have to wire it on the pads on the bottom of the board as the pins on the connector pulled its ground from the wrong spot if you want to have a lost model alarm. Ask me how I know...

 

[LionFishSlayer]

Thanks PsyBorg, yes, the esc's and motors are 4s ready the only thing I was not real sure on is how to go about the video and such. I have one of the full frame PDB boards I think that will cut the voltage down properly? So how do you like the board? I dont have any build experience yet so i dont know what the difference in wiring would be..

 

[JimCR120]

Better.The Naze32 is an F1 processor in the STM32 series, the SPF3 is an F3 processor -- a more advanced version. This gives you a bit more processing overhead, spare memory (small built-in blackbox) and quite a bit of the "you can have A, but you'll need to disable B" goes away -- it's all available, all at the same time.What wire goes where will change (If you haven't read the manual, you might want to), but once you hit the configurator, it's pretty much the same. I'd call this a "Happy Accident"

Would this be the same as the F3FC David W. sells for his V4? Little by little I hope to know what I'm doing and with what.

 

[Speedeo]

I got one of those, mine never worked though, connected to the computer once and would never connect again.

I believe it is a clone, but according to others it usually works fine and is a great board.

 

[ElectriSean]

Would this be the same as the F3FC David W. sells for his V4? Little by little I hope to know what I'm doing and with what.

It is based on the same F3 processor, but David's is his own design, and has it's own Cleanflight target.

 

[JimCR120]

Please pardon my noobiness and please correct me where I am wrong.

As I understand it, Cleanflight is a free program the allows one to configure his multirotor. I am not sure what you mean by target though.

 

[ElectriSean]

There are 2 parts to Cleanflight, the configurator program that runs on your computer, and the firmware that gets flashed onto the flight controller itself. Each board has a different firmware, even though they use the same or similar processors. This is what they call the target - the board that a specific firmware is designed for. Trying to flash the SPF3 firmware to Davids F3FC may show as successful, but probably won't work as intended.

I you're using Davids F3FC I'd recommend using his Triflight firmware for Cleanflight, it's fairly optimized and he has setup video's to get you through it I'm not sure if there is a vanilla Cleanflight target that will work with that board anyway.

 

[JimCR120]

There are 2 parts to Cleanflight, the configurator program that runs on your computer, and the firmware that gets flashed onto the flight controller itself. Each board has a different firmware, even though they use the same or similar processors. This is what they call the target - the board that a specific firmware is designed for. Trying to flash the SPF3 firmware to Davids F3FC may show as successful, but probably won't work as intended.

I you're using Davids F3FC I'd recommend using his Triflight firmware for Cleanflight, it's fairly optimized and he has setup video's to get you through it I'm not sure if there is a vanilla Cleanflight target that will work with that board anyway.

Thank you for the clarification. That clears it up nicely.
I am running Triflight.