TBS Crossfire

[fltundra]

I recently went from stock Taranis 2.4g to Ezuhf and have had nothing but problems at any distance because of high noise floor on 2.4 and 430mhz. Well I now have the Crossfire and all I can say it is amazing piece of engineering!
I'm not looking to fly out of LOS, but instead wanting flawless link in any environment. Initial testing at local areas I fly have been flawless. Crazy thing, it runs dynamic power to a max of what ever you set and I have only seen it jump above 10 mw a few times. Noise floor on 900mhz is quiet here.
View attachment 26362

 

[fltundra]

 

[Old Man]

You gotta give kudos to Trappy and his Blacksheep crew for this kind of stuff. They know what they gotta have to fly the way they do and develop the stuff that will let them do it. Thanks for the head's up about the performance.

 

[JoeBob]

Way cool trailer! (Don't let the gendarmes know that there's a person inside!)

 

[fltundra]

TBS CROSSFIRE V1.14

- added: New high bandwidth and ultra low latency RF profile
- added: 3 times faster RC update rate with new RF profile ( cuts down latency to 5ms best / 12ms worst )
- added: New selection for Output 8 ( Bridge and MAVLInk )
- added: Serial bridge support added. 1.2kB/s throughput with baudrate 57600. Output 8 ( uart TX ), Output 7 ( uart RX ) and Output 6 ( uart RTS flow control )
- added: MAVLink support added. Baudrate 57600. Output 8 ( TX ) and Output 7 ( RX ) Can be connected to any MAVLink telemetry port, gives full MAVLink support in new RF profile and basic support in current RF profile
- added: MAVLink parser added, feeding forward relevant data to the TBS CORE PRO ( requires TBS CORE PRO firmware V1.38 or newer )
- added: MAVLink dynamic bandwidth control for incoming messages. This gives high update rate for forwarded messages to BST and make the frames fit the downlink avoiding buffer overflow and high latency
- added: RC over MAVLink support added ( RC_CHANNELS_OVERRIDE ). Can be enabled on RX settings.

- modified: Intelligent RF profile selection ( new and current RF profile ) optimizing for maximum bandwidth or long range
- fixed: Headtracker input support. Two channels ( pan and tilt ) can be mapped individually from any HT Input channel to and overwrite a channel on the RC input frame
- added: Crossfire is a RC frame source via BST. Navigate through TBS CORE PRO menu with remote sticks, without ColibriRACE ( TBS CORE PRO firmware V1.38 or newer )
- added: Bluetooth mode selection added ( off, MAVLink emulator, Bridge and MAVLink ). If Bluetooth module is not disabled it will change mode depending on the receiving frames from the receiver
- added: Crossfire 8ch Diversity receiver can now update TBS BLACKBOX and XF micro receiver over USB and BST
- added: Menu option do disable telemetry downlink( under RX settings )

- improved: CRC protection improved to make the system even more resistant against picking up invalid frames
- improved: Dynamic power mode hysterisis tuned. 2s delay added for reducing power level. Increase power level only on burst frame loss not on single frame lost
- improved: RX automatically binds to the transmitter after successful firmware update over the air if it wasn't bound before.

For those wo want to use the TBS CROSSFIRE as telemetry radio here is a sample cable to interface a PIXHAWK FC.

If you use TBS BLACKBOX and TBS Crossfire, please only connect the TBS CROSSFIRE to the FC. It will forward all required data to the TBS BLACKBOX. An instruction on how to set up your FC is written inside the TBS BLACKBOX manual on page 4 and following. It's the same setup no matter if you have it connected to the TBS CROSSFIRE or TBS BLACKBOX.
http://www.team-blacksheep.com/tbs-blackbox-manual.pdf

I will send my next few days on writing down documentation to make it more easy how everything needs to be connected together.



Please keep in mind this is a BETA version and be careful flying this version. To unlock your TBS Agent for beta releases please open your TBS Agent. press F1 and check the beta releases check box.
I'm happy to get a lot of feedback on this, specially ground recording of long range flight with the TBS CORE PRO ( so we see the full set of TBS CROSSFIRE telemetry ) and new TBS BLACKBOX log files. Last edited by Perna; 13th February 2016 at 12:59 PM.

 

[Old Man]

Good Lord, that trailer is much to similar to some early military GCS set ups I've worked with,

 

[Kenneth Flucas]

Hello Black Sheepers. I am currently working on a 700mm quad & I will be using the crossfire diversity bundle. I'm seeing online that a lot of people are having the same failsafe issues. Mainly with the micro & mini Rx on racers. Is there a lot of the same problems with bigger drones using the diversity set-up for short &/or long range flights? Also, how well does the crossfire diversity perform around buildings, power lines & cell towers? I intend for my flight altitude to vary between 6ft - 200ft. From high above trees, buildings & power lines to below, around & in between them.