Back to RC world after 8 years: here what I found in the closet, Turnigy 9X

Everything about the smartie programmer and backlight kit!
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simonech
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Back to RC world after 8 years: here what I found in the closet, Turnigy 9X

Post by simonech »

Dears,
after almost 1 month and a half in confinement due to COVID-19 I decided to get back to what used to be a hobby of mine before many years of hiatus due to moving countries, jobs, wife and so much more.
I'm trying to assess if what I have is still workable or if I should toss everything away and start new.


I found this radio, a Turnigy TGY 9X

I also found that I apparently bought a 9x programmer board (9x Solderless Programmer Board Rev 2.3 from smartieparts) with a backlit led driver, but never installed it. I think was to be able to upload a new custom OSS firmware.
Still worth using it? or the latest versions of the fw do not support this model any more?

Thank you
Simone

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Re: Back to RC world after 8 years: here what I found in the closet, Turnigy 9X

Post by pmullen503 »

Yes. I have the same setup and have been using it for years. It's my TX for winter indoor flying. I run ER9X but most flavors of open source software support it.
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Re: Back to RC world after 8 years: here what I found in the closet, Turnigy 9X

Post by MikeB »

openTx stopped supporting the 9X some time ago, but er9x still supports it.

Using the Smartieparts board should be straightforward to get er9x installed.

Mike
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Re: Back to RC world after 8 years: here what I found in the closet, Turnigy 9X

Post by simonech »

MikeB wrote: Mon Apr 13, 2020 2:01 pm openTx stopped supporting the 9X some time ago, but er9x still supports it.

Using the Smartieparts board should be straightforward to get er9x installed.

Mike
Thank you. Just spent the last 2-3hrs installing the board. Now I'll try installing the new firmware
simonech
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Re: Back to RC world after 8 years: here what I found in the closet, Turnigy 9X

Post by simonech »

MikeB wrote: Mon Apr 13, 2020 2:01 pm openTx stopped supporting the 9X some time ago, but er9x still supports it.

Using the Smartieparts board should be straightforward to get er9x installed.

Mike
Hi, Mike, I'm trying to upload the er9x, using a Mac. I managed to install avdude, but I get the following error:

Code: Select all

avrdude: initialization failed, rc=-1
         Double check connections and try again, or use -F to override
         this check.
I suppose it means it cannot communicate with the device? If I unplug the USB I get another error " could not find USB device with vid=0x16c0 pid=0x5dc vendor='www.fischl.de' product='USBasp'". Shall I keep power in the radio?

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Re: Back to RC world after 8 years: here what I found in the closet, Turnigy 9X

Post by MikeB »

Never use the -F option!
The most common cause for this is the spring contacts on the Smartieparts board are not making a good contact with the pads on the main board.
It is recommended to clean the pads well, particularly since your radio has been lying idle for a long time.
One other possibility is the main board is an old "V1" version where one of the pads in connected to the wrong place on the main board.
This post: https://www.rcgroups.com/forums/showpos ... ount=15956, shows a V1 board that was modified to work.

Mike
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Re: Back to RC world after 8 years: here what I found in the closet, Turnigy 9X

Post by simonech »

MikeB wrote: Mon Apr 13, 2020 7:03 pm Never use the -F option!
The most common cause for this is the spring contacts on the Smartieparts board are not making a good contact with the pads on the main board.
It is recommended to clean the pads well, particularly since your radio has been lying idle for a long time.
One other possibility is the main board is an old "V1" version where one of the pads in connected to the wrong place on the main board.
This post: https://www.rcgroups.com/forums/showpos ... ount=15956, shows a V1 board that was modified to work.

Mike
Thanks, I'll have a look. But just to be sure about a detail. Shall I keep the radio plugged to batteries while doing the procedure? Should it be on? or is the USB already powering it up? I'm asking because I did it without having the radio plugged to battery.
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Re: Back to RC world after 8 years: here what I found in the closet, Turnigy 9X

Post by MikeB »

I think you will need to power the radio while flashing. The installation instructions for the Smartieparts board say you need to do that from rev. 2.2 onwards.

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Re: Back to RC world after 8 years: here what I found in the closet, Turnigy 9X

Post by simonech »

MikeB wrote: Mon Apr 13, 2020 8:51 pm I think you will need to power the radio while flashing. The installation instructions for the Smartieparts board say you need to do that from rev. 2.2 onwards.

Mike
I followed the guide, but I guess I missed that part. Maybe that's why it couldn't detect the chip.
I'll try tomorrow.
thx
Simone
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Re: Back to RC world after 8 years: here what I found in the closet, Turnigy 9X

Post by bob195558 »

Did you find where the updated firmware is ?

http://www.er9x.com/

Also old stuff here: https://smartieparts.com/shop/index.php ... ex&cPath=9
Er9x on 9x radio, with Smartieparts Programmer and TelemetrEZ Board.
ErSky9x on Taranis, Sky9x, 9Xtreme radios.
3D-Printing: (https://openrcforums.com/forum/viewforum.php?f=129).
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Re: Back to RC world after 8 years: here what I found in the closet, Turnigy 9X

Post by simonech »

bob195558 wrote: Mon Apr 13, 2020 10:26 pm Did you find where the updated firmware is ?

http://www.er9x.com/

Also old stuff here: https://smartieparts.com/shop/index.php ... ex&cPath=9
Thank you. Yeah, I followed the guide for rev 2.3 http://smartieparts.com/shop/index.php? ... page&id=23
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Re: Back to RC world after 8 years: here what I found in the closet, Turnigy 9X

Post by simonech »

MikeB wrote: Mon Apr 13, 2020 8:51 pm I think you will need to power the radio while flashing. The installation instructions for the Smartieparts board say you need to do that from rev. 2.2 onwards.

Mike
Indeed... I guess I should have read the document till the end :)
herefore, it is now necessary to have your radio powered on via battery during programming and transfer operations.
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Re: Back to RC world after 8 years: here what I found in the closet, Turnigy 9X

Post by simonech »

MikeB wrote: Mon Apr 13, 2020 8:51 pm I think you will need to power the radio while flashing. The installation instructions for the Smartieparts board say you need to do that from rev. 2.2 onwards.

Mike
Double-checked the board type, seems to be v2 (with pad in the right place).
Also tried turning on the radio and trying to flash, but I still get the same error.
avrdude: initialization failed, rc=-1
Double check connections and try again, or use -F to override
this check.
So, no idea what to do next.
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Re: Back to RC world after 8 years: here what I found in the closet, Turnigy 9X

Post by MikeB »

Did you clean the pads?
Try adding -B 100 on the AVRDude command line, this slows the flashing down and sometimes helps.

Mike
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Re: Back to RC world after 8 years: here what I found in the closet, Turnigy 9X

Post by simonech »

MikeB wrote: Tue Apr 14, 2020 6:51 pm Did you clean the pads?
Try adding -B 100 on the AVRDude command line, this slows the flashing down and sometimes helps.

Mike
yep, done both

here is my board. Some of the pads look a bit shabby Image
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Re: Back to RC world after 8 years: here what I found in the closet, Turnigy 9X

Post by MikeB »

A clean of the pads again is worth a try. After 8 years there is likely to be a thin layer of oxide on them. I have known the pads to need to be cleaned more than once to get them to connect. Some people recommend using Isopropyl alcohol, or something similar.

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Re: Back to RC world after 8 years: here what I found in the closet, Turnigy 9X

Post by simonech »

MikeB wrote: Tue Apr 14, 2020 6:51 pm Did you clean the pads?
Try adding -B 100 on the AVRDude command line, this slows the flashing down and sometimes helps.

Mike
I bumped into this page http://smartieparts.com/shop/index.php? ... page&id=24
It's the troubleshooting page.
It mentions that on Linux or Mac the latest version of AVRDUDE won't work, and suggests downgrading from v 6.x to v5.x. I installed it via brew, so no idea how to revert back to an old version.
But on my Mac I also have Parallels with Windows. So I installed eepe on windows as well, and boom... It's now flashed and I go to the splash of the new firmware.

Image

So, at the end, it was a SW issue :)

thx for the help... now time to see how this thing works :)

Just as heads up. when I checked version installed, it shows r-820 from 2016, while from the site it seems the latest version is r821
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Re: Back to RC world after 8 years: here what I found in the closet, Turnigy 9X

Post by MikeB »

I made an error when building r821 and the Date and revision shown is the value you have.
I post "test" versions of er9x here: https://openrcforums.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=4598.
While called "test", unless the text description indicates otherwise, these are fully functional. Just download the .zip file and extract the .hex file you need, which will be er9x.hex for an unmodified radio.

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Re: Back to RC world after 8 years: here what I found in the closet, Turnigy 9X

Post by simonech »

MikeB wrote: Wed Apr 15, 2020 8:42 am I made an error when building r821 and the Date and revision shown is the value you have.
I post "test" versions of er9x here: https://openrcforums.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=4598.
While called "test", unless the text description indicates otherwise, these are fully functional. Just download the .zip file and extract the .hex file you need, which will be er9x.hex for an unmodified radio.

Mike
Thank you very much. Now I'll have to learn how to use it :) before testing new builds. I'm a very basic user, just using ardupilot. I'll probably need to install the ardupilot specific build. What does it have specific compared to the normal build?
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Re: Back to RC world after 8 years: here what I found in the closet, Turnigy 9X

Post by bob195558 »

Some info here about using er9x: https://openrcforums.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=6473

Some ErSky9x youtube video's here,
which may or may not be a help because ErSky9x is a lot bigger
(ErSky9x is er9x on steroids, which the 9x radio's stock processor is to small to use):
http://webmailb.juno.com/webmail/new/6? ... =460154846
Er9x on 9x radio, with Smartieparts Programmer and TelemetrEZ Board.
ErSky9x on Taranis, Sky9x, 9Xtreme radios.
3D-Printing: (https://openrcforums.com/forum/viewforum.php?f=129).
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Re: Back to RC world after 8 years: here what I found in the closet, Turnigy 9X

Post by MikeB »

The ardupilot version includes a telemetry display screen for ardupilot telemetry. However, using this depends on what Tx module and receiver you are using together with doing mods to the radio to enable it to receive the telemetry.
What Tx module and receiver are you using?

Mike
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Re: Back to RC world after 8 years: here what I found in the closet, Turnigy 9X

Post by simonech »

MikeB wrote: Wed Apr 15, 2020 10:55 am The ardupilot version includes a telemetry display screen for ardupilot telemetry. However, using this depends on what Tx module and receiver you are using together with doing mods to the radio to enable it to receive the telemetry.
What Tx module and receiver are you using?

Mike
Turnigy 9x with its own receiver. Not telemetry mods on the radio
I'll stick to normal one then :)

Thx a lot for all the help!
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Re: Back to RC world after 8 years: here what I found in the closet, Turnigy 9X

Post by jhsa »

Er9x Manual

viewtopic.php?f=5&t=6473

João
My er9x/Ersky9x/eepskye Video Tutorials
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