Entry #15 - Mateksys Betaflight FC F405-OSD and FC HUB-62

I recently bought a Makesys Betaflight FC F405-OSD which along with the FC HUB-6S has pretty much everything I want in an FC.

• SD Card slot
• Current Sensor
• 4 UARTs - Matek say there are 5 UARTs, but it is not clear to me how of if you can access the 5th UART
• DShot
• Betaflight OSD

Not only does the Matek F4 tick all my boxes  it even adds some other desirable features.

• The is a ICM20602 gyro that can run at 32khz and communicates over SPI.
• The PID loop can run at 16khz. 
• The pads on the FC and the PDB are well laid out and and very accessable. Most if not pads all are on the edge of the board as is the DFU boot button.
• The silk screen is clear and  complete i.e. it labels all the pads and the board looks and feels like it is well built.  
• If you are using the matching FC HUB-6S  PDB you can connect the FC and PDB with a little ribbon cable that comes with the PDB. That ribbon cable carries 5v, 10v, the ESC signals, VCC for voltage sensing and I believe current. so there is no soldering required to connect the FC to the PDB.
   That is really cool - it's a feature I really like.
• The FC HUB-6S  supports up to 6s.

Some people ask why you need 4 UARTs.

Well in truth you don't.
Assuming you use an SBUS or iBUS receiver you can fly with just one UART.
Or even no UARTs if you choose to go down the PPM path.

However assuming you're an average quad pilot you'll want to use all the features available to you then your UART port allocation would probably look a bit like this:
1) SBUS to Receiver

2) FC Telemetry

3 Smart Audio/Tramp telemetry

4) ESC telemetry - this is the big one most ppl forget about

I want to use all of those technologies and find them very useful, hence having enough UARTs is important to me when choosing FCs.

Performance

When I flew that FC for the first time it was in a brand new 6" Armattan Chameleon with Wraith32 ESCs and BoltC 2450Kv 2207 motors.
And boy was it smooth. That quad is so smooth to fly.
It was the nicest quad I'd flown until I crashed it and broke an arm.

I'm waiting for the warranty replacement frame , but when it is flying it flys really nice.
Easily my best flying quad.

But here's the thing.

I can't say for sure that the FC F405-OSD  was the only reason that the quad felt so good, because the quad incorporated a couple of major changes of tech which my other quads did not have at time of my first flight. These changes are:

• Moved to BF 3.2 pre release version
• BLHeli 32 replaced BLHeli S
• It was my first 6"

So I'm not sure what made that quad fly so well, but the I believe  FC 405-OSD certainly helped.
I've since used it on other quads and it seems to perform really well.

So all in all a very the  FC F405-OSD is a very nice FC  and with the matching PDB (FC HUB-6S )it forms  a very well designed and well integrated core avionics package, that delivers all the features and ports required for a modern quad.

If this sounds good to you but you are building tight builds or prefer and all in one FC then hold on to your hat.
Matek just released the Matek F405-OSD an all in one version of the board. From the specs it's the same FC  with pretty much the same specs but all the features of the PDB are also incorporated into the same board. Basically the   Matek F405-OSD  is like an F4 version of the Betaflight F3 FC with but better build quality and I suspect better 5v/10v power supplies.

Tidy, Very tidy.

Over all I really like these boards  and I think over time they will become my go to board, especially as you can essentially get a traditional version with integrated, but separate PDB or an AIO with integrated PDB if that is what you want/need.

Caveat

At the time of writing (Jul 2017) the FC 405-OSD  has a temporary caveat:

• The board is not a supported/included  target in the current official  Betaflight  version 3.1.7 release.
• However if you want to run 3.1. 7 you can get 3.1.7  firmware for it as Matek has organised a 3.17 hex which you can get from the Matek site 

As far as I am concerned there's that is the only downside of this board and that downside is temporary and it is  trivially easy to work around .
This issue will be resolved totally when BF 3.2 is released later this year as the Matek board is an officially supported target in BF 3.2.

In the meantime here's the deal with firmware.

• I'm not 100% sure, but I think the board shipped with BF 3.1.7 .
• The Matek target is NOT included in the current 3.17 Betaflight release.
• The Matek target IS included in the current BF3.2 branch and will be officially supported by the Betaflight  project when BF 3.2 is released, probably later this year.
• Bear in mind Betaflight 3.2 is not released yet or even at  release candidate stage, so caveat emptor if you decide to use it. 
• If you're curious the reason I flashed 3.2

Getting Betaflight 3.2 pre release builds.

• You can get BF 3.2 from the Betaflight Jenkins instance.
• If  you choose to use BF 3.2 you will need a more recent version of the Betaflight Configurator  than the current release version. 
• You'll need to go to Betaflight Configurator github project and download a very recent version e.g. the master ( I think that link will get you a recent Configurator).
• If you have other quads you will need to keep your old configurator around too for your other quad(s) if any, as there are some incompatibilities between the 3.17 configurator and the more recent versions.
  One way of having different versions of the BF Configurator is to create a second user profile in Chrome or a new user in Windows or OSX and use that user./profile for the newer version

Build/Config Issues

The only issue I experienced during the build/configuration was the OSD.

When I powered the quad on and put on my goggles what I saw was a screen full of garbage characters (see below).
The fix was to upload another font in the OSD page of the configurator.
I know the "betaflight" font works and so does the "digital".
I've had reports that some of the fonts won't work so I advise you choose one of the above  but YMMV.

The OSD issue looks like this:

Entry #14 - Turnigy Evolution Sticks Stuck Issue

The Turnigy Evolution is an inexpensive transmitter apparently designed more or less exclusively for quad pilots flying software like Betaflight or Cleanflght.
It's a great controller for controlling relatively simple aircraft.
It's got everything you need to fly quads and it's a great form factor - the case is sort of like a Playstation controller with a screen.

It's a really good controller. The feature set is minimal but it does everything most quad pilots would need and it does it well and at $74USD  (15 July 2017 it's a really good transmitter, which I'd highly recommend to any one getting into FPV/racing/freestyling .

BUT
I recently had an issue where the throttle stick would occasionally get stuck.
When that happened I could not get the throttle past about about 50%.
I Googled and searched YouTube, but could not find anyone who was reporting similar issues.

So I pulled the controller apart but  could not find any loose material. I was stumped.
Then while putting it back together I noticed the switch on the back of the controller was loose.
It could move in and out. Hmmm could this be the issue?

As it happens yes it was the issue. The difference between a working throttle and a jammed throttle was about 3mm of movement.

Since I didn't find any one else reporting this issue I made a video explaining the issue and how to solve it.