So I Bought A Horus

"Perfectly good airframe" have you seen it? The only things good about it are my hand crafted light ply wheels - and they're rubbish. Anyway, I have a list of excuses that is as long as it is dubious.

Just completed a full model setup using OpenTX and it has been a relativly pain free experience largely because of the amount of online help to set you off in the right direction.

I'm quite impressed with OpenTX having used it in anger and will continue to use it in the short term. I'll switch back to FrOS at some poiint to do a real comparison when FrOS is a little more mature.

The Good and the bad:

The Horus switches are designed to be used with FrOS and make no sense when using OpenTX

There's the abilty to adjust the screen brighteness on the fly in FrOS, you can't in OpenTX. The screen is bright and will need turning down in dull light.

As an Futaba user I felt comfortable with the FrOS menus and had a model setup and servos moving within a couple of hours of getting the Radio. It's taken a couple of days to get to understanding the basic functionality of OpenTx and I daresay it will take more hours of headscratching before I feel comfortable with it.

The programming of a model in OpenTX is likely to be difficult to understand when you come back to modify it after a couple of months unless you keep copious notes. There is a simulator in Companion which will help.
I spent a happy hour with OpenTX trying to work out why my telemetry special functions weren't working only to discover that the set of logical switches I was using had been set up in the wrong order. Very powerful functionality, very confusing when you get it wrong.

The FrOs Tx screen has a largely fixed layout with the abilty for some limited customisation, OpenTX allows much greater freedom with multiple pages if required. I like the flexibilty which OpenTX offers although you can waste a ridiculous amount of time making unusable screen layouts.

Probably the best thing about OpenTX is that whatever you are trying to do someone will have done it before you and will have posted a “how to” youtube or written an article on it, perhaps even providing a downloadable template.

Anyway, here's an example of getting screen customisation wrong. I just need to work out how to undo what I've done.

Um! Alan you keep referring back to FrOS which is not very helpful considering that you had not really used Frsky's OS as such.

I will keep this simple otherwise it does and will get technical. Not sure why you are using the logical switches on all the cells. I appreciate you are trying to be warned of a low cell. You have jumped in to the deep end here and personally I don't think you need it at this early stage. The battery widget will display the cell voltages and total value.

If you want a simple warning of battery pack going low then use one logical switch. See my Valkyrie file or read below.

L 1. a<x V1 tele X (x being the line in your telemetry list which corresponds to the total voltage of the Lipo pack Assign in Special Functions a spare switch, eg: SG up. Action = Play Value, Parameters = tele x, Enable = Number of seconds ie; 15 secs. This will every 15 secs call out the battery voltage. Because it may not be necessary at the early part of the flight you use the switch to disable it. (Note: if you go high throttle for a while the pack volts will drop and it will tell you and can get annoying. I use my switch once I know my flight time and switch warning on later on in flight).

Note: Any switch on control surfaces and most of them are three way must have a value, ie; rates/expo.

Keep at it in the meantime and keep it simple till you get to use it in action. Hopefully we can get up the field soon and you can see how my Horus is set up.

Phil Ford wrote: Um! Alan you keep referring back to FrOS which is not very helpful considering that you had not really used Frsky's OS as such.

Not quite sure what you mean Phil, I have had enough exposure to both FrOS and FrOS style operating systems to start looking at advantages and disadvantages, whether people are at all interested is perhaps a different matter.

I will keep this simple otherwise it does and will get technical. Not sure why you are using the logical switches on all the cells. I appreciate you are trying to be warned of a low cell. You have jumped in to the deep end here and personally I don't think you need it at this early stage. The battery widget will display the cell voltages and total value.

If you want a simple warning of battery pack going low then use one logical switch. See my Valkyrie file or read below.

L 1. a<x V1 tele X (x being the line in your telemetry list which corresponds to the total voltage of the Lipo pack Assign in Special Functions a spare switch, eg: SG up. Action = Play Value, Parameters = tele x, Enable = Number of seconds ie; 15 secs. This will every 15 secs call out the battery voltage. Because it may not be necessary at the early part of the flight you use the switch to disable it. (Note: if you go high throttle for a while the pack volts will drop and it will tell you and can get annoying. I use my switch once I know my flight time and switch warning on later on in flight).

The intention was to provide a low voltage warning and a critical voltage warning for the Lipo lowest cell voltage and the total pack voltage. The additional bits of logicary are to stop both a low voltage warning and a critical voltage warning being given when the Lipo voltage drops to a critical value. Just a bit of playing about to find out how things work. I may use this in the Avanti where I get paranoid about running out of electricity.

Note: Any switch on control surfaces and most of them are three way must have a value, ie; rates/expo.

That one had me stumped for a while, I couldn't work out why the expo curve didn't change on my dual rates when I hit the rate switch, at least the Tx gives you a clue that some thing is wrong providing you've done the setup in the inputs not the mixer.

Keep at it in the meantime and keep it simple till you get to use it in action. Hopefully we can get up the field soon and you can see how my Horus is set up.

GVARS next

I can understand your need for warnings on lowest cell (been watching Painless I think ) especially with the EDF Avanti but as you have found out it takes a bit of tweaking. The reason I kept to warning on main pack voltage so I would not run out of electrons and also to be a bit conservative on throttle ( I have a tendency to want to go flat out most of the time like Dave B :lol: ) If you battery widget is on one of your screen pages after before and after flight it will show the cell voltages anyway.

Setting up rates/expo and most other stuff I mainly use the Companion to save all the scrolling and clicking on the TX's switches. It's my preference anyway. Although Telemetry twiddling has to be done on the TX.

Images are for my Beast which I do give some stick. Main screen and battery widget screen (no;2). I have a third screen which monitors the switches and surfaces. The battery widget shows live volts and lowest volts over flight. This may be just all you need. The screen says the same values because I have not flown the pack yet, it was brought down to storage mode previously.

Quote"I have had enough exposure to both FrOS and FrOS style operating systems to start looking at advantages and disadvantages, whether people are at all interested is perhaps a different matter." Sorry I did not know you had played with it previously....

I assume you have SD logs as ON? Great for reviewing what has been going on.

At the end of the day I don't want you going back to Futaba so stick with it. :lol:

I've not looked at anything to do with logging yet that's a whole new chapter.
It's going to take a bit of trial and error to settle on a screen layout - too many choices I need to be more careful about which background image to use, it's probably best left as default. I'm quite getting used to green and purple though I may keep it :sick:

I'll still be using the Futaba for quite a while, certainly until I get some confidence with the Horus; which hopefuly will start soon.