New Naze32 rev6 | Upgrade of rev5

by Oscar

Naze32 rev 6 has just been released, I am excited and curious to find out what it is all about :) Is the New version Naze board worth upgrading to?

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What’s new and better on Naze32 Rev6?

Here are the changes / improved features compared to previous Naze32 Rev5 Acro

  • USB Port on the right side
  • PPM/PWM input as through-hole (it used to be solder pads, and caused some problems when overheat the pads pulled off)
  • Built-in SBUS Inverter (so people doesn’t have to do the inverter hack on their x4r with Naze32. For Smart Port setup see here.
  • Onboard 2MB flash (useful for blackbox)
  • IMU has been changed from MPU6050 to MPU6500
  • Built-in BMP280 barometer (Not sure what you can use it for on a Acro board flying rate mode, but better than none I guess)
  • Fully pinout compatible with rev5 accessories (OSDoge etc)
  • Compatible with Spectrum satellite
  • Sonar pads with resistors added for direct connection to 5V sonar
  • All extra pads (FT, GP, A5) on top, only sonar on bottom
  • 3.3V, I2C on standard-size headers

In the Full version

  • Different barometers: the full has the ms5611 as the original naze full
  • It has 128mbit flash memory = 16MB

How about the processor? f1 or f3?

On the new Rev6, it’s still the same old STM32 f1 chip (STM32F103CBT6 32-bit ARM Cortex M3 processor).

The Naze32 official configurator “Baseflight” is said to have problem with processors faster than the f1 anyway (e.g. the f3) by several members in my facebook group.

Apparently your f1 processor (Naze32) can match the performance of a faster f3 if you turn off the accelerometer in CLI. The f3 allows you to run accelerometer and other non-gyro stuff while maintaining stable and fast looptime.

Anyway, this board is a very basic and plain flight controller.

So would I get it?

Not major different really compared to the old version. But it is cheaper than Rev5, and it works with SBUS out of the box.

To be honest i am quite happy with the Naze32 Rev5 i have got, so I might get one if I damage my good old Naze board, and use my X4R-SB and SBUS. But I probably won’t bother with the Full version, I might as well get one of the F3 one with that amount of money.

There are so many more powerful alternatives nowadays,  such as The Serious Pro Racing F3, The RMRC Seriously Dodo, and The Tornado F3, all utilize f3 processor although a little bit more expensive.

Update (15/09/2015) – This board is currently not supported by Cleanflight v1.9, it doesn’t flash the Naze32 rev5 firmware. Maybe next release will, we will keep an eye on it!

Update (14/10/2015) – Cleanflight team is currently working to support this board.

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74 comments

Jose Quinonez 10th September 2016 - 4:59 pm

I Bought a racetek ez32 10dof
Its a naze 32 But Its rev 6 and When I Try to flash it with betaflight it always says there’s a bootloader problem

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oliver r 19th August 2016 - 1:36 am

Hi,

I apologize in advance if this question has already been answered. I have my naze32 rev6 board hooked up to my spektrum ar7700 receiver, pin 4, 5v, and ground. I want to hook up a blackbox to it as well, and i know it’s supposed to hook up to pin 3 and 4. can i just hook up to pin 3, along with my power and ground coming from esc rail like normal?

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Oscar 22nd August 2016 - 3:07 pm

You can just hook up TX pin on the FC, RX isn’t required for Blackbox to work.

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Klam 21st February 2016 - 6:08 am

no matter on latest betaflight or CF, I got to reduce the P a lot in order to avoid hunting. This is not happened on my other FC
any comment please?

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Oscar 22nd February 2016 - 11:49 am

is it the Naze32 REv6 ? could just be the FC

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Don Perry 8th February 2016 - 10:57 pm

Hi Oscar, I recently purchased the Futaba 10J transmitter. It came with aR3008SB TFHSS receiver. Can this be used with the Naze 32 board.

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Kriegger 17th January 2016 - 4:47 pm

Hi Oscar,
I just purchased The Naze32 ver6 Full.. Flashed it with Cleanflight….and that’s about it. Bought it because it has GPS capabilities, and was given a GPS board. Problem is, will this ver6 work with my cheapie FlySky FS-T6 radio and receiver. From what I have read, It doesn’t look promising. Also heard the board is delicate, and with all those wires coming out of the left side, I worry about bricking it. Anyone know if this is a doable project or a lost cause?

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David 20th January 2016 - 7:54 pm

Hi Kriegger,
the only thing I can answer is that it will work with the FS-T6 and the FS-R6B, I´m flying an RCExplorer Tricopter V3 with the integrated Naze32 without any problems. The board shouldn´t have any problems at all with PWM receivers like the FS-R6B.

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Edward Farrugia 8th January 2016 - 6:41 pm

Hi Oscar,

On the rev 6, does this mean that you could connect an external GPS + Compass to a funfly board and have PosHold, AltHold and RTL?

With the rev 5 full, only option is to cut traces (to risky with my current skill set!) – external compass required to reduce interference to acceptable level.

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clive 3rd January 2016 - 5:09 am

Can anyone tell me what is happening with the Naze32, it seems that they are not being made/sold anymore.

I was going to purchase one and hope to have GPS return home etc but as I have read on it seems that things have come to a halt.
Can anyone confirm the present situation

Cheers

Clive

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opsidao 22nd December 2015 - 7:38 pm

FYI, I think cleanflight 1.11 has support for it..

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Mr.SpeedyGonzales 19th December 2015 - 11:17 pm

(input voltage of up to 16V) Can I connect 4s battery (16.80V)?

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Terry Stone 28th February 2016 - 3:24 pm

Yes, I’m flying a Versacopter 250 V2 with a Naze 32 Rev 6 and a 1800 MAH 4S 30C and there’s no issues.

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Darshana 10th June 2016 - 1:22 am

R u sure ? With out bec ?

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mikedobell 16th December 2015 - 4:37 pm

Hi Oscar

It looks like Cleanflight now supports rev6!
https://github.com/cleanflight/cleanflight/issues/1321

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George 15th December 2015 - 6:56 pm

Hi Oscar!!!

what are the advantages over NAZE32 SP Racing F3 ? Or there aren’t any?

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Oscar 16th December 2015 - 3:49 pm

what is the NAZE32 SP Racing F3? these are 2 different FC…

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Dan Golden 1st December 2015 - 2:01 pm

Hi Oscar. I hear the rev6A and rev6B are out there somewhere

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AtomicBomberman 19th November 2015 - 10:20 am

“… but it doesn’t seem to support smart port so might not do telemetry. Will confirm later”
I’ve troubles getting telemetry up and running with smartport. Can you confirm that smartport telemetry is working or not?
Thank you!

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Jazzcool 24th November 2015 - 5:38 am

Atomic, I second that request..

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Oscar 24th November 2015 - 6:21 pm

No guys, you need inverter to use Smart Port on Rev6.

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AtomicBomberman 25th November 2015 - 3:26 pm

Hi Oscar,
I analyzed the serial communication with an oscilloscope and found out that the signal on the TXI pin is inverted compared to the U1TX pin. Do i really need an inverter? And what pin(s) should i use for smartport telemetry?
Thanx, Joe

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Oscar 25th November 2015 - 3:40 pm

I don’t have the Rev6 myself, but someone who does told me he tried it. Smart Port doesn’t work by connecting directly, but SBUS works out of the box.

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AtomicBomberman 28th November 2015 - 7:58 am

Hi Oscar!
Thank you for the Info! I’ll build a simple Inverter in the next weeks an will post my learnings ;-)
Cheers, Joe

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Oscar 28th November 2015 - 12:06 pm

cool, please let me know how it goes :)

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Gianandrea Traina 17th November 2015 - 12:51 pm

Hi Oscar
I’m really struggling setting up the buzzer on this rev6 running betaflight, all the connections should be right and the aux channel is properly assigned, but i get no voltage at all on the buzzer pins. Any chance you know what could it be that I’m doing wrong?

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Gianandrea Traina 17th November 2015 - 3:06 pm

Hi Oscar
I know you still I have to modarate my previous message but I just wanted to let you know that the issue is now fixed with the latest version of betaflight

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Oscar 18th November 2015 - 3:23 pm

Hi Gianandrea
Great, thanks for letting me know!

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Diandi 10th November 2015 - 12:44 pm

I found rev6 also changed the IMU to MPU6500 instead of MPU6050

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Oscar 11th November 2015 - 1:10 pm

Thanks Diandi, yes you are right IMU has been changed too!

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MototechRyan 4th November 2015 - 4:26 am

Hi Oscar, i really appreciate your work. I’ve learned alot. Do you or anyone know how to get a discovery buzzer to work with the rev 6 naze32 acro?
I have connected the buzzer to the buzzer pins, but it will not shut off when the FC is powered. I am running baseflight and have my aux switch correctly set to activate/deactivate the buzzer. I suspect this is due to the removal of the second diode on the rev 6. The removed diode has also caused me problems when plugged into usb only. Causing the voltage supplied by the usb to back feed into my escs and then into my PDB.

Works correctly on my naze32 rev 5. Anyone have a discovery buzzer tied to an aux switch working correctly with the rev 6?

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Oscar 4th November 2015 - 7:25 pm

sorry i don’t have a rev6 to test.

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MichelP29 8th December 2015 - 8:43 am

Hi MototechRyan,
I have the same issue with USB feeding its voltage back to my matek mini PDB and ESC, causing high power drain from the USB, and making the naze32 rev6 becoming very very hot (can’t stay with my finger on the board).
It only appears when USB is connected but no Lipo.

I heard there was naze32 Rev6a and Rev6b, do you know if there is a differrence between the two version for the usb ?

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Khalid Saeed 22nd October 2015 - 8:18 pm

Got my Rev6 almost working with Baseflight. The only issue is throttle setup. The darn thing just keeps beeping and the motors keep starting randomly.

The weird thing is, with Cleanflight, the throttle worked perfectly. It was the gyro/accel/mag that wouldn’t work.

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Kevin Yang 25th October 2015 - 2:04 pm

With Cleanflight, you Have to use o.66(develop ver) configurator. You will see acc,mag, etc working.

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Henrik 19th October 2015 - 9:44 am

Hi Oscar
Why is the naze boards still using serial to usb converter? This can be realized with hardware USB peripheral on the STM32 like the CC3D does. In addition, it does not only take up one serial port, we still don’t have access to all three hardware serial ports on the uc, while they realize a second serial port in software. I don’t understand why? Seems ineffective.

Serial ports on the cleanflight compatible flight controllers has become more and more needed as you want not only connection with the computer (CC3D has solved this with using hardware USB), but also for telemetry, OSD, blackbox, s.bus and some might also want it for bluetooth and GPS.

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Chulmo Yang 15th October 2015 - 4:34 pm

Thank you for your good posting !
I bought two rev6. Yes you right there are no big difference rev6 and rev5 in my case. Because I turned off acc and my looptime 1000 rev5, rev6. I use Cleanflight 1.10 version with no issues but I have to decrease PID gain than 1.9.
Also I agree with your opinion. I am quite happy with the Naze32 Rev5. Also I don’t need sbus converter with X4R black(sbus) with using simple solder), I hope get one of the F3. But you think there are no big differce F1 turning off the ACC?

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Oscar 16th October 2015 - 9:19 am

Check out my latest post about differences between F1/F3 boards :)

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FedorCommander 7th October 2015 - 7:59 am

Hi Oscar

Well… There are still hardware hacks (Yes, some people like that too) ;) For example, F3 and F1 have pretty much the same pinout, and in few hours, i was able to run F3 cpu on el-cheapo .ang.ood cc3d board ;))) Since it uses SPI interface for the gyro, i was able easy to go down as 185us looptime (could be lower i guess, but i am not that talented as Boris) :) Of course, new target had to be made for port an timer mapping… But it fly well :)

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Oscar 7th October 2015 - 5:05 pm

That’s insane :D but i guess it’s extremely difficult to swap the processor? Any major improvements on flying performance when you do that on the CC3D compared to the Naze32?

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FedorCommander 22nd November 2015 - 10:39 am

Hi Oscar

Thanks Oscar for mentioned me on you blog ;) Well, its not hard to swap cpu if u have some soldering skills… Its not BGA after all ;))) The things is the software… I had to make my own target and reconfigure quite a lot. Luckily, cleanflight clean code helps with this task. I was flying it, and it was not much different then 1000hz to be honest. There is no filters yet available for 8khz gyro sampling rate atm. I know Boris was looking into that. 185us was the lowest looptime for me. Also, i HAD to use fastpwm to update escs…

Some video: https://youtu.be/AQiIC7afqLY

Cheers
Alex

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Oscar 24th November 2015 - 6:03 pm

thank you Alex for the update!

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alexc 25th April 2017 - 5:48 pm

I did the same thing! Replaced the F1 with F3 on the board and I could not find any information on the web of someone doing the sw porting. Can you please share the required target configuration files? I tried to do it and I got stuck because I don’t have experience working with STM32 microcontrollers.

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alexc 13th May 2017 - 7:31 am

If someone else is interested I found a few guys that are trying this upgrade and they created the CC3DF3 target for the firmware:
rcgroups.com/forums/showthread.php?2614433-CC3D-with-STM32F3-w-Betaflight/

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Grizor 4th October 2015 - 2:12 am

Hi Oscar
Have you read about the weirdness with USB passing power to the receiver and other connections to the rev 6? Makes it real hard to calibrate motors…

Seems if you are using a separate BEC to power your naze rev 6 you need to disconnect it while the usb is plugged in.

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Bigpops74 4th October 2015 - 11:04 pm

You utter legend Grizor

I’ve just spent about 4 hours trying to calibrate my littlebee ESCs on the rev6, and as soon as I pulled the BEC, it worked first time!

Thanks.

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Forrest 9th October 2015 - 10:40 pm

This is utter BS. I will be switching for a tornado or something else soon. FVTs were so hard to calibrate because of that voltage. I ended up just calibrating them through direct firmware flashing via arduino nano.

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Oscar 6th October 2015 - 4:44 pm

HI Grizor
not sorry i have not looked deeper into Rev6 since the article… neither am I planning to get one… ;-p

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Chester 17th January 2016 - 6:08 am

You can solve the problem of Naze Rev6 passing power from USB back to input pins and then through the DC-DC converter by using a schottky diode in series with the 5V lead. The part costs about 20 cents.

The Naze Mini also has no reverse power circuit. Not sure why it was removed in the reV6 PCB. Thanks for noting it as I just got one and was about to wire it up. I first ran into this problem a few days ago AfroMini which also has no blocking circuit, that one can also be fixed with a diode.

I have made a post about how to correct the problem here on my site:
http://hilo90mhz.com/naze-v6-reverse-voltage-feedback-issue-schottky-diode-fix/

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Faisal 19th January 2016 - 1:09 pm

Hi Chester,

Thank you for the pictures (a thousand words)… In theory you could put a diode on each of the Red wires coming from the ESC servo lead… wouldn’t that work the same… Solder and shrink tubing… Just trying to avoid soldering the modification to the board… Is there any advantage of having all the ESC’s powering the board… Electronics not my strong point, but soldering not a problem…

Thanks again…

Faisal

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Chester 23rd January 2016 - 2:44 am

Hi Faisal,
You shouldn’t actually connect all the red wires from each ESC, if you are using the ESC to power your flight controller with 5V you only want one of the ESC red wire connected(cut the other 3), and that red wire should go through the diode.

You can put it in the wire leading to the board and not on the board itself, I just put it on the board as it seemed simpler, and I solder all wires directly without connectors.

If you are using a separate BEC(battery eliminator circuit, really just a 5v regulator) or PDB(power distribution board) to create the 5V from the battery then you dont want any of the red wires from ESC connected, just cut them off.

The reason is that the ESCs power themselves with their own regulators, and you dont want to connect 5V regulators together as they will all sort of fight each other.

Even with none of the red wires from ESCs connected to the flight controller it is still possible to have them turn on from USB because without the diode the 5V can go back through your 5v regulator and supply 5v on the main flight battery power lines, so then the ESCs are being powered from their main battery input wires and turn on.

Hope that explains it all :) let me know if you have other questions.

Reply

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Faisal 2nd February 2016 - 1:54 pm

Hi Chester,

Works perfectly… 4 Opto ESC’s, separate 3A UBEC with the diode soldered to the +5V lead, then plugged into the FC… no voltage passing back…

Thanks, you are a star…

Cheers
Faisal

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Boris 23rd September 2015 - 12:35 am

Hi Oscar,

The latest Betaflight firmware allows also to run with acc on 1khz :D.

Still working on luxfloat, but all other pid controllers can keep up with gyro and luxfloat will very soon.

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Oscar 23rd September 2015 - 12:14 pm

Thank you Boris! That’s good to know!
your work is evolving so fast it’s hard to keep up :D

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Boris 23rd September 2015 - 3:55 pm

It’s almost there. You know how it goes….you keep getting new ideas down the road :D.

My dev version is now able to run super stable refresh rate of 1khz on naze32 board even on luxfloat with acc enabled. Just needs some stability period.

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Oscar 25th September 2015 - 4:35 pm

AMAZING!! can’t wait to see what you and all those clever people can come up with in the future! Unbelievable!

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Vis 29th September 2015 - 5:13 am

Hi Oscar

I just tried to install my backup settings to my new Rev6 Naze from my Rev5 that succumbed to gyro failure. Was using Luxfloat. Perhaps this is why I can’t even hover without the quad behaving uncontrollably. Also Cleanflight isn’t displaying any flight modes as options in the Modes tab.

Looks like I’ll just have to hold tight for an update. Really like the layout of the board and most surprising of all is that I finally get my battery telemetry to work on my Taranis after 3 different Naze board and 3 different D4riis.

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Vis 6th October 2015 - 1:43 pm

I ended up installing CF1.11 (not officially released yet) and am flying that successfully. I need to tune my PIDs though as it isn’t behaving quite as nicely as before. That said, I like the board and look forward to trying out Blackbox to aid with tuning.

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atheros 21st September 2015 - 8:29 am

Hi Oscar
You’ve mentioned some F3 boards. You’ve wrote they are more expensive than the F1 alternatives.
When I look at The Tornado F3, it seems significantly cheaper than the other F3 offerings. Does it mean it’s of lower quality? Did you made any tests of the F3 boards?

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Oscar 21st September 2015 - 4:19 pm

HI Atheros, no i haven’t tested f3 FC apart from the BrainFPV board, but then it doesn’t run Cleanflight…

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Rhys 20th September 2015 - 5:08 am

HI Oscar.
I am a little slow, so the 2 boards I just received, there nothing but paper weights?

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Andres 1st October 2015 - 8:23 pm

Hi Rhys,

Same here, I bought this FC didn’t work and though it was broken. For 20 bucks bought a second one and then immediately discovered that CF V1.9 is not supported. Basically I now have 2 paperweights, another V5 on the way and I’m still not in the air. I sure hope V1.10 or V1.11 are supported to justify these FCs otherwise it’s ebay time!

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GuerillaFPV 19th September 2015 - 2:30 am

I should have done a little more homework before purchasing this board. It arrived today and I had no idea it could not be flashed with cleanflight.

I’m happy to hear Dominic mention the ability to eventually fix this. In the meantime, fly with PC0…um no thanks.

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Dominic Clifton 18th September 2015 - 4:37 pm

Cleanflight will support this board, some cleanup is required in the driver code first however. 1.11.0 is the target which will likely follow soon after 1.10.0

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Dominic Clifton 19th September 2015 - 1:58 pm

I should also say that this statement is incorrect.

“Apparently your f1 processor (Naze32) can match the performance of a faster f3…”

The F1 will NEVER match the performance of an F3 regardless of if you turn some features off. The F3 is just better, it has a newer faster CPU core.

Please see the following urls to compare processor specs.

st.com/web/en/catalog/mmc/FM141/SC1169/SS1576
st.com/web/en/catalog/mmc/FM141/SC1169/SS1031

st.com/web/en/catalog/mmc/FM141/SC1169/SS1576/SS1576/LN1531
st.com/web/en/catalog/mmc/FM141/SC1169/SS1031/LN1565

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Oscar 19th September 2015 - 2:43 pm

what i wanted to say was, currently the fastest yet effective looptime is 1000, the Naze32 couldn’t reach that looptime without turning off Acc. I wasn’t trying to say the f1 can be as good as the f3 overall. (on FC that are using i2c on gyro)

anyway thank you for all your hardwork on cleanflight buddy! :)

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Leemus 18th September 2015 - 10:47 am

Hi Oscar

ivrotor.com has them in stock for the guys in Aussie and New Zealand

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Cam 16th September 2015 - 8:08 am

It will be interesting to see how long/if this board is supported in cleanflight… given the absolute blood feud TimeCop has for Dominic ( github.com/multiwii/baseflight/commit/d25564e26b3050ba1c895e505ac7f7cf6c4be3cd – not that I think the document I linked to could hold up to any sort of legal scrutiny… )

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Sam Su 15th September 2015 - 10:08 pm

Hello Oscar,

You mentioned that the “f1 processor (Naze32) can match the performance of a faster f3 if you turn off the accelerometer in CLI.”

So does that mean an F3 with Accelerometer-OFF process faster than an F3 with Accelerometer-ON?

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Oscar 16th September 2015 - 4:21 pm

Hi Sam, Yes it can run faster, but there is no point running faster looptime as it’s limited by how fast your gyro can deliver new data … at the moment i think 1000 looptime is effectively the fastest looptime you can use.

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Ciolouse 15th September 2015 - 4:35 pm

Hi Oscar
Where can I find this new card plz ?
And thanks a lot for your awesome blog !!!

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Tony 15th September 2015 - 8:34 pm

Yes, if anyone finds a retailer for this, let us all know!

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Oscar 15th September 2015 - 9:57 pm

Hoverthings.com and GetFPV.com have them at the moment…

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Davhed 16th September 2015 - 5:04 pm

Multirotor Superstore also has them for the folks in the US.

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