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Flight Controller Setup

Note

This page contains instructions for flashing pre-built firmware binaries. For instructions on building and flashing from source, see Building and Flashing in the Developer Guide.

Compatible Hardware

Deprecation Notice

As of June 2019, plans are to deprecate support for the F1 in the near future. If you need to use an F1, you will need to retrieve an older version of the code that supports the F1. However, if there are issues, we will not be able to help you fix them.

As of January 2018, ROSflight is only supported on flight controllers with STM32F103 and STM32F405 processors, specifically, the Revo, Naze32, and Flip32. Both the 6-DOF and 10-DOF versions of each board are fully supported. We have had the most success with Revo boards purchased from HobbyKing. We have had weird issues with knock-off boards from Chinese vendors. An acro version (IMU-Only) can be found at readytoflyquads.

Serial Port Configuration

Tip

You can see which groups you are a member of by running groups $USER on the command line.

The following bullet point is necessary:

  • Be sure your user is in the dialout and plugdev groups so you have access to the serial ports. You will need to log out and back in for these changes to take effect. 
    sudo usermod -aG dialout,plugdev $USER

If you experience issues, you may need one or both of the next two bullet points:

  • Temporarily stop the modem-manager (Sometimes, Linux thinks the device is a modem -- this command will be effective until next boot, or until you run the command again with start in place of stop) 

    sudo systemctl stop ModemManager.service

  • Add the custom udev rule so Linux handles the flight controller properly (copy the following as /etc/udev/rules.d/45-stm32dfu.rules) 

    # DFU (Internal bootloader for STM32 MCUs)
SUBSYSTEM=="usb", ATTRS{idVendor}=="0483", ATTRS{idProduct}=="df11", MODE="0664", GROUP="plugdev"

Tip

You can permanently disable the ModemManager if you do not need it, then you won't have to disable it every time you reboot: 

sudo systemctl disable ModemManager.service
Replace disable with enable to revert (i.e. if you find some other program you use needs access to it). Or you can uninstall it entirely from your system: 
sudo apt purge modemmanager

Flashing Firmware using the Cleanflight Configurator

  • Download the latest version of ROSflight for your board here.

  • Install the Cleanflight configurator - It is an extension to Google Chrome - link

  • Load the firmware, and flash using cleanflight configurator

    • Open the configurator
    • Open firmware flasher
    • Connect your flight controller
    • Make sure that you have selected the right port (or DFU in the case of F4-based boards)
    • Select "Load Firmware (Local)"
    • Select your *.hex file you downloaded earlier.
    • Short the boot pins on your flight controller, unplug it, and and plug back in.

cleanflight_gui_1

  • If you scroll to the bottom of the screen, you will see the green bar indicate progress as the hex is flashed to the flight controller. You should then see something like the following:

success

  • You're done! Great job.

Flashing Firmware from the Command Line

F4 Boards

You can use dfu-util to flash the firmware. This is helpful if you need (or prefer) a command-line interface.

  • Install the dfu-util utility
sudo apt install dfu-util
  • Download the latest rosflight-F4.bin file, found here
  • Put the board in bootloader mode (short the boot pins while restarting the board by cycling power)

Tip

dfu-util auto-detects F4-based boards. Try dfu-util -l to make sure your board is in bootloader mode

  • Flash the firmware to the device 
        dfu-util -a 0 -s 0x08000000 -D rosflight-F4.bin

F1 Boards

You can use stm32flash to flash the firmware to F1-based boards.

  • Install the stm32flash utility 
    sudo apt install stm32flash
  • Download the latest rosflight.hex file, found here, to the current directory

  • Put the board in bootloader mode (short boot pins while restarting the Naze by cycling power)

  • Flash the firmware to the proper device (replace /dev/ttyUSB0) 

        stm32flash -w rosflight.hex -v -g 0x0 -b 921600 /dev/ttyUSB0