I like that you include the "warts" in your reviews. Very little of this equipment gives up and works easily or quickly, so it's important to condition hobbyists for that reality.
Yes - thanks for noticing :) Birthday pressie from my wife was a Canon EOS M3, which is the cheapest "decent" camera I could find with a flip up screen and a mic input. I'm using a Rhode video micro direction mic on this one as well instead of the normal lapel mic... which picks up a touch of noise from the computer but seems pretty good I think, and stops the issues where I forget I'm tethered with a cable and walk off :D
CurryKitten yeah it looks and sounds great! I just got myself a lapel mic to try and improve my audio, I've been using a senheiser shotgun thing but it seems to have a lot of hiss that I need to remove in the edit so hoping this will sound better and save time! The autofocus looked impressively fast on yours and didn't hunt! I've got a Panasonic GH2 but it's getting a bit old now, may need to have a look at new bodies!
Obviously, it had a bunch of problems, but is actually holding up ok. Still in the quad in the video, and I'm always amused by the barometer. Usually (but not always) a faulty board will show up straight away - in which case claim a refund/replacement immediately - it's been very rare for me to have a fault appear after multiple good flights. The only board I've managed to completely wreck is an original SPRacing F3 board after lots of crashes
I've had 3 of these and they all failed. This FC is a piece of crap. Shame too, since it has very nice feature set. E: I should add that the first and third board failed after working for 10 or so flights. The board number 2 failed right after the build when I plugged in the battery to calibrate the voltage sensor. The other two failed the same way, having the battery plugged in while you connect the USB cable seems to fry these boards.
Glad you like the omnibus. A shame you had a dud though. The normal F3 and F4 are probably more than enough for most people and easier to use. Normal F3 has an SD whereas the normal F4 does not. Also, F4 processors have some difficulties with IBUS on most UART 's. When it comes to the lines in your video feed, I think it' S noise from your motors. Do you have an LC filter somewhere to power your cam and VTX to see if that makes any difference?
Great vid. The solder is so important. Are you using any flux, are you twisting the wires when striped, are you tinning the wires before soldering to the board. Did I mention do you use flux?? I'm going to do a live stream building a quad either, tonight or tomorrow with the same f4 board and all in one ESC.
Yes, I use a solder that contains flux, wires do get twisted before tinning, and any pads also get tinned. I do find that sometimes it can be a struggle on these boards where you need to go through the hole with the wire after tinning it.
I'm building a 250, and my ESC grounds are connected to the signal grounds. Do I still need to run separate grounds to my Omnibus FC along with the signal wires? (I have removed +ve leads)
If you are powering everything with the same battery (as I presume you are) then no, the grounds should be common throughout, so you'll just need the signal wires.
Hi My friend. What PDB would you use for this board, I'm new to building but not to flying. I intend to put this board into a 450 or a 500 quad, first off I will build it bare bones and then add GPS etc later. Many thanks John
There's an altitude hold mode available in betaflight called BARO, but it's not something I've tried - not really the thing for this type of quad. Be more useful in using something like iNav in a different platform
I like the omnibus line. It's my goto FC. I prefer the v4 non current sensor. I know the Banggood version is a knockoff from the original. You can tell by the lack of the SD reader. Looks like they gave you a genuine version or perhaps they copied that too? The OSD via betaflight is the only way I like to fly now. I have tried a couple variants (DYS + 4 in 1 esc). The Dys works great. Mostly, I'll never fly a fc without the built in osd. Thanks for the vid.
could you try to explain how to get RSSI on the OSD? was that done through your RX? or through the FPV cam on board OSD? or through the FC OSD? I'm new to this and kinda confused
This actually works by using the telemetry on the Taranis and then sending it to the flight controller over another RC channel. It's a bit complex to explain in a comment, but I'll write it up quickly as a blog post. So check www.currykitten.co.uk in the next few days and I'll put some details up
Yes - it looks like the Chinese manufacturers have jumped on the Omnibus design as the next big thing, with several versions of different boards from other companies
It's reply by Ali seller about original "Omnibus F4 Pro": Dear friend, it is open source product, no original or original, friend. best wishes Have a nice day! :)
hi i am trying to find info on the tyro99 fc this is my first build so far so good but just not sure how to correctly connect the flysky fs-x6b in ibus to the fc any help would be great thanks keep up the good work
I'm wondering if the "power" of an F4 is really going to improve flight, or if it's a higher-speed CPU we need to make stability corrections occur sooner. Better, more sensitive gyros, and other sensors? Now if you could tell me that a cheap down-facing CMOS could give me position hold using an F4, THAT would be a feature! If it could "run a program" to do that analysis, it would be a win, but that would require memory too, wouldn't it? Does anyone have a solid handle on the actual deficiency? I mean, what is this board with an F4 doing that the same board with an F3 would not actually accomplish, albeit with higher CPU load? Obviously OSD onboard is a great innovation, especially since it allows setting adjustments in the field. With the data you want originating in the controller it makes even more sense.
I'm not sure that anything actually *needs* an F4 as yet, but it's quite easy to see the advances in how quick ESCs need to be communicated with. If you take a F1 board and tell it to do high loop/gyro times and use dshot600 then it'll max out the CPU straight away. So presumably as new ESC protocols appear (and they seem to pop up weekly) the power may be needed. Does it make things fly better though. Well, yes, but not by much IMO. There was a great increase in performance once oneshot came in. But I'm not sure I could spot the difference between a quad running Oneshot125 and Dshot600, same with the PID loop moving from 2khz to 4khz... yeah it's faster, but there's a cycle of dominishing returns.
Mine was 5 beeps, followed by 2 beeps (as seen in this video th-cam.com/video/alE96ClB8pE/w-d-xo.html) Which means an accelerometer failure... sadly it's on the same chip as the gyro which also went crazy
Well my new PIKO turned up today and I wired it all in and baring any failures tomorrow on the flight test all appears to be well. So I thought lets plug the old one back into beta flight and NOW it's completely happy, so go figure? Well spare a FC is alway useful. I wonder if I have any spare motors.... and a frame... and a receiver.
Nice video, thanks for sharing. I am RC heli pilot that has been out of the hobby for some time and I thought about getting back into it and I discovered all this stuff about FPV quad copters and I trying to understand all the bits and pieces. I am an Electrical Engineer so I understand the technology for the most part but I am having trouble with the naming conventions. Is Omnibus a manufacture or brand name or technology level / firmware. I get the F1, F2, F3, F4, F7 processor stuff but the DSY, Normal, Omnibus stuff is what is confusing me, any help that anyone could give me would be much appreciated. Thanks again for sharing.
Omnibus started out as a specific board with it's own firmware, but then got cloned - so there's lots of boards that are called Omnibus, but technically only one "real" sort However (aside from a few normal/pro variations between the F3/F4) they should all carry the same pin-outs, have the same UARTS, and pretty much work the same
There's a Baro-hold mode in Betaflight - which is supposed to hold you at an altitude. I'm not sure how well it works, it was removed for a while and then put back in. Generally, for using these sort of flight modes I'd be more tempted to use iNav. The SD card is for blackbox recordings (telemetry/stick positions/accelerometer status/etc/ that you can playback)
Bit of a weird one, as the limited space in this frame restrict what can be used. In this case it's a Lumenier SMC-600. Which only has a CMOS sensor, but does a reasonable job
It's got a boot button on there, if you look at the close up image on the video at around 3m 09s you can see it. Look at the bottom right of the board, just above 2 holes and just under a plastic connector there's a round button. That's the boot button.
ok thank you... but is anyone having problems having no connection through sbus? i bought two boards from bangood and both have this problem from the beginning and now one will not power up through usb at all with no recognition from the computer that anything was plugged into the usb
Hello, thanks for your vidéo how to remap out motor for smartport frsky rx xsr ? Second problem i have connect + lipo to vdb and f4 with thé same cable and i havent monitoring bat on osd my connection isn’t good ? Sorry for my english i am french thanck a lot
I haven't tried - it flashed to 3.1.7 without a problem... I did notice it used DFU though, which means you need that weird driver thingy if you are on windows (I think)
+CurryKitten so with BF 3.1.7 the rssi works straight? does it work on analog input or pwm? ive got my rssi pad soldered to a wire. when i enable it w/o anything connected, it reads 44% and stays in that value even with GND or 3v3 input(that analog input is max rated 3v3 only)... and another thing, with enabling rssi, this will not 'disable' amp reading.right? because I plan to use voltage/current/altitude/rssi on my osd... i plan to use a hacked flysky ia6b reciever(analog output) for rssi
You can put an SD card in to use with Blackbox - which will give you a lot more storage than the onboard flash memory (that's if you are into theblack box data analysis)
Bangood is not best place for buy such delicate things like FCs. I received banch of defective items from them and cannot take any reaction from support in 4 days already.
It's quite simple when dealing with any supplier that drags their feet on support. You pay with PayPal, and if they don't respond quickly - you open up a PayPal case, and you don't close it until it's fully resolved. Sometimes it's only opening a case that will push them into action
Open source FC units are a crap shoot. I have spent much more purchasing a ''genuine' FC from somewhere like my******.com and though responsive they had no clue about how wire it up how I wanted, features (buzzer, baro) simply didn't work due to issues I had then found out were known. I now shake the dice and hope the ~20$ to 30$ last generation units work and have had better luck.
I totally agree! I always use PayPal...you can still pay by the credit card of your choice - mine, a mileage card, so I get the benefit of PayPal making them behave, and still get my mileage! (:^)
I review a clone board, as many people will pick these up without even realising that there is an original Omnibus. If it goes horribly wrong, I like to try and fix things up as best I can though
Shame on you, dry joints, frayed wires and no colour coding with your wiring, but at least you got it going even with the inbuilt problems. Not exactly a good way to send a review board with badly soldered components. I must have been lucky, I was given one which had been badly mauled almost to death by an amateur soldering iron and it took me a while to clean it up, but it's working OK on a test quad. As for the noise bars, it could be noisy ESCs putting crap into the system. Isolating the video feed could quieten it down some. Obviously not on a racing quad, but on anything larger I'd be rerouting the video wiring side of things and/or running a separate battery for video.
I like that you include the "warts" in your reviews. Very little of this equipment gives up and works easily or quickly, so it's important to condition hobbyists for that reality.
Glad you got it sorted in the end Wayne! Also, new camera? Intro shots looked great!
Yes - thanks for noticing :) Birthday pressie from my wife was a Canon EOS M3, which is the cheapest "decent" camera I could find with a flip up screen and a mic input. I'm using a Rhode video micro direction mic on this one as well instead of the normal lapel mic... which picks up a touch of noise from the computer but seems pretty good I think, and stops the issues where I forget I'm tethered with a cable and walk off :D
CurryKitten yeah it looks and sounds great! I just got myself a lapel mic to try and improve my audio, I've been using a senheiser shotgun thing but it seems to have a lot of hiss that I need to remove in the edit so hoping this will sound better and save time! The autofocus looked impressively fast on yours and didn't hunt! I've got a Panasonic GH2 but it's getting a bit old now, may need to have a look at new bodies!
There seems to be alot of faulty boards coming from Banggood of this type. How is your board doing????
Obviously, it had a bunch of problems, but is actually holding up ok. Still in the quad in the video, and I'm always amused by the barometer. Usually (but not always) a faulty board will show up straight away - in which case claim a refund/replacement immediately - it's been very rare for me to have a fault appear after multiple good flights. The only board I've managed to completely wreck is an original SPRacing F3 board after lots of crashes
I've had 3 of these and they all failed. This FC is a piece of crap. Shame too, since it has very nice feature set.
E: I should add that the first and third board failed after working for 10 or so flights. The board number 2 failed right after the build when I plugged in the battery to calibrate the voltage sensor. The other two failed the same way, having the battery plugged in while you connect the USB cable seems to fry these boards.
One thing I use the baro for is to set telemetry alarms on my radio. I've never actually heard my alarm set to 125m, but it's nice to have it.
Glad you like the omnibus. A shame you had a dud though. The normal F3 and F4 are probably more than enough for most people and easier to use. Normal F3 has an SD whereas the normal F4 does not. Also, F4 processors have some difficulties with IBUS on most UART 's. When it comes to the lines in your video feed, I think it' S noise from your motors. Do you have an LC filter somewhere to power your cam and VTX to see if that makes any difference?
I'm hoping my 'blue' Omnibus F4 Pro V3 won't be problematic ;o) LC filter required,, for this board. Another good review, Mr kitten.
Great vid. The solder is so important. Are you using any flux, are you twisting the wires when striped, are you tinning the wires before soldering to the board. Did I mention do you use flux?? I'm going to do a live stream building a quad either, tonight or tomorrow with the same f4 board and all in one ESC.
Yes, I use a solder that contains flux, wires do get twisted before tinning, and any pads also get tinned. I do find that sometimes it can be a struggle on these boards where you need to go through the hole with the wire after tinning it.
CurryKitten yeah these board with the holes are designed for the header pins. Which is a pita when space is tight.
I'm building a 250, and my ESC grounds are connected to the signal grounds. Do I still need to run separate grounds to my Omnibus FC along with the signal wires? (I have removed +ve leads)
If you are powering everything with the same battery (as I presume you are) then no, the grounds should be common throughout, so you'll just need the signal wires.
@@CurryKitten thanks, that makes sense.
Hi My friend. What PDB would you use for this board, I'm new to building but not to flying. I intend to put this board into a 450 or a 500 quad, first off I will build it bare bones and then add GPS etc later. Many thanks John
mine got video not passed through into OSD, my receiver only show OSD but no video, faulty board?
I also have same problem on my flight controller 5v regulator does not work so have to use BEC from PDB
It's interesting it can show altitude in the OSD. Does it have altitude hold mode or something like that? Nice hat BTW!
There's an altitude hold mode available in betaflight called BARO, but it's not something I've tried - not really the thing for this type of quad. Be more useful in using something like iNav in a different platform
I like the omnibus line. It's my goto FC. I prefer the v4 non current sensor. I know the Banggood version is a knockoff from the original. You can tell by the lack of the SD reader. Looks like they gave you a genuine version or perhaps they copied that too? The OSD via betaflight is the only way I like to fly now. I have tried a couple variants (DYS + 4 in 1 esc). The Dys works great.
Mostly, I'll never fly a fc without the built in osd.
Thanks for the vid.
It does have an SD reader - but I still think it's a knock-off :) The DYS looks like a very neat solution
could you try to explain how to get RSSI on the OSD? was that done through your RX? or through the FPV cam on board OSD? or through the FC OSD? I'm new to this and kinda confused
This actually works by using the telemetry on the Taranis and then sending it to the flight controller over another RC channel. It's a bit complex to explain in a comment, but I'll write it up quickly as a blog post. So check www.currykitten.co.uk in the next few days and I'll put some details up
Love your explanations! Great video and informative value!
This actually a very old version of the Omnibus F4 :/
You should buy the last original version from myairbot, way better!
Have a great weekend
This is a knock of off the real Omnibus F4. Not the original but only 22 bucks or so.
Yes - it looks like the Chinese manufacturers have jumped on the Omnibus design as the next big thing, with several versions of different boards from other companies
It's reply by Ali seller about original "Omnibus F4 Pro":
Dear friend, it is open source product, no original or original, friend.
best wishes
Have a nice day! :)
Newer version doesnt have current sensing tho wtf.....!! Whatsss the catch...!!??
hi i am trying to find info on the tyro99 fc this is my first build so far so good but just not sure how to correctly connect the flysky fs-x6b in ibus to the fc any help would be great thanks keep up the good work
where are the uart pins?
I'm wondering if the "power" of an F4 is really going to improve flight, or if it's a higher-speed CPU we need to make stability corrections occur sooner. Better, more sensitive gyros, and other sensors? Now if you could tell me that a cheap down-facing CMOS could give me position hold using an F4, THAT would be a feature! If it could "run a program" to do that analysis, it would be a win, but that would require memory too, wouldn't it?
Does anyone have a solid handle on the actual deficiency? I mean, what is this board with an F4 doing that the same board with an F3 would not actually accomplish, albeit with higher CPU load?
Obviously OSD onboard is a great innovation, especially since it allows setting adjustments in the field. With the data you want originating in the controller it makes even more sense.
I'm not sure that anything actually *needs* an F4 as yet, but it's quite easy to see the advances in how quick ESCs need to be communicated with. If you take a F1 board and tell it to do high loop/gyro times and use dshot600 then it'll max out the CPU straight away. So presumably as new ESC protocols appear (and they seem to pop up weekly) the power may be needed.
Does it make things fly better though. Well, yes, but not by much IMO. There was a great increase in performance once oneshot came in. But I'm not sure I could spot the difference between a quad running Oneshot125 and Dshot600, same with the PID loop moving from 2khz to 4khz... yeah it's faster, but there's a cycle of dominishing returns.
I suspect a micro would benefit more from a faster PID loop.
2 Beeps, 3 Beeps? That's spooky I've just had that over the weekend and had to order a new FC myself.
Mine was 5 beeps, followed by 2 beeps (as seen in this video th-cam.com/video/alE96ClB8pE/w-d-xo.html) Which means an accelerometer failure... sadly it's on the same chip as the gyro which also went crazy
Well my new PIKO turned up today and I wired it all in and baring any failures tomorrow on the flight test all appears to be well. So I thought lets plug the old one back into beta flight and NOW it's completely happy, so go figure? Well spare a FC is alway useful. I wonder if I have any spare motors.... and a frame... and a receiver.
Nice video, thanks for sharing. I am RC heli pilot that has been out of the hobby for some time and I thought about getting back into it and I discovered all this stuff about FPV quad copters and I trying to understand all the bits and pieces. I am an Electrical Engineer so I understand the technology for the most part but I am having trouble with the naming conventions. Is Omnibus a manufacture or brand name or technology level / firmware. I get the F1, F2, F3, F4, F7 processor stuff but the DSY, Normal, Omnibus stuff is what is confusing me, any help that anyone could give me would be much appreciated. Thanks again for sharing.
Omnibus started out as a specific board with it's own firmware, but then got cloned - so there's lots of boards that are called Omnibus, but technically only one "real" sort However (aside from a few normal/pro variations between the F3/F4) they should all carry the same pin-outs, have the same UARTS, and pretty much work the same
Can you set beta flight to use barometer to fly up to x metres and manually fly at that flight? Does the sd card record video?
There's a Baro-hold mode in Betaflight - which is supposed to hold you at an altitude. I'm not sure how well it works, it was removed for a while and then put back in. Generally, for using these sort of flight modes I'd be more tempted to use iNav. The SD card is for blackbox recordings (telemetry/stick positions/accelerometer status/etc/ that you can playback)
@@CurryKitten Is there a flight controller that has Baro and an on board sd for video record ?
In a word, no. Whilst you'll sometimes find VTX's with DVR capabilities, never in a flight controller.
What FPV camera did you use for this video?
Bit of a weird one, as the limited space in this frame restrict what can be used. In this case it's a Lumenier SMC-600. Which only has a CMOS sensor, but does a reasonable job
CurryKitten Cheers! Looks great for a CMOS
i cannot flash this board the boot button has no button top to press in and the dfu command is not recognized in cli tab how can this be flashed?
It's got a boot button on there, if you look at the close up image on the video at around 3m 09s you can see it. Look at the bottom right of the board, just above 2 holes and just under a plastic connector there's a round button. That's the boot button.
ok thank you... but is anyone having problems having no connection through sbus? i bought two boards from bangood and both have this problem from the beginning and now one will not power up through usb at all with no recognition from the computer that anything was plugged into the usb
it gets power but the info cable is not recognized in betaflight
Hello, thanks for your vidéo how to remap out motor for smartport frsky rx xsr ? Second problem i have connect + lipo to vdb and f4 with thé same cable and i havent monitoring bat on osd my connection isn’t good ? Sorry for my english i am french thanck a lot
So have you got the situation where your motors aren't connected in the right order and so you want to do a remap to fix this ?
Does anyone know the correct values for the current meter?
Will this work well with inav on a multiroter?
Should do - I've used Omnibus's in iNav on planes, but not multi's so far.
Bro can u tell how to program this board
Use Betaflight
Hi, can you get your board in to bootloader mode? I can't with mine.
I haven't tried - it flashed to 3.1.7 without a problem... I did notice it used DFU though, which means you need that weird driver thingy if you are on windows (I think)
how did you do that?
Lic. Claudia I. Armenta just install the drivers from the main betaflight app front-page or use the driver fixer from the immersion rc website.
+CurryKitten so with BF 3.1.7 the rssi works straight? does it work on analog input or pwm? ive got my rssi pad soldered to a wire. when i enable it w/o anything connected, it reads 44% and stays in that value even with GND or 3v3 input(that analog input is max rated 3v3 only)... and another thing, with enabling rssi, this will not 'disable' amp reading.right?
because I plan to use voltage/current/altitude/rssi on my osd... i plan to use a hacked flysky ia6b reciever(analog output) for rssi
Does anyone know if I can use PWM transmitter with this flight controller?
Κατσαρό Πιρούνι Should work, but i would suggest using some Bus Communication...
No it takes ppm and sbus/ibus. U could get a converter but the u risk not having failsafe
why does it has a sd cart reader?
You can put an SD card in to use with Blackbox - which will give you a lot more storage than the onboard flash memory (that's if you are into theblack box data analysis)
Bangood is not best place for buy such delicate things like FCs. I received banch of defective items from them and cannot take any reaction from support in 4 days already.
It's quite simple when dealing with any supplier that drags their feet on support. You pay with PayPal, and if they don't respond quickly - you open up a PayPal case, and you don't close it until it's fully resolved. Sometimes it's only opening a case that will push them into action
Open source FC units are a crap shoot. I have spent much more purchasing a ''genuine' FC from somewhere like my******.com and though responsive they had no clue about how wire it up how I wanted, features (buzzer, baro) simply didn't work due to issues I had then found out were known. I now shake the dice and hope the ~20$ to 30$ last generation units work and have had better luck.
I totally agree! I always use PayPal...you can still pay by the credit card of your choice - mine, a mileage card, so I get the benefit of PayPal making them behave, and still get my mileage! (:^)
Your problem is that you got a CLONE board on Banggood
I review a clone board, as many people will pick these up without even realising that there is an original Omnibus. If it goes horribly wrong, I like to try and fix things up as best I can though
Shame on you, dry joints, frayed wires and no colour coding with your wiring, but at least you got it going even with the inbuilt problems. Not exactly a good way to send a review board with badly soldered components. I must have been lucky, I was given one which had been badly mauled almost to death by an amateur soldering iron and it took me a while to clean it up, but it's working OK on a test quad. As for the noise bars, it could be noisy ESCs putting crap into the system. Isolating the video feed could quieten it down some. Obviously not on a racing quad, but on anything larger I'd be rerouting the video wiring side of things and/or running a separate battery for video.