Another Bricked Transmitter

This is now the third person (including myself) whose transmitter was bricked after a firmware update.

https://www.rcgroups.com/forums/showpost.php?p=39004849&postcount=136

Can someone from the dev group PLEASE investigate? SkyViper has absolutely no support team to be found. You guys are the only ones that can be communicated with.

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Hi Scott,

Would it be possible to have you send us your bricked TX so we can look at it, please? We can exchange it for another TX unit that we will double check here before sending it out.

Also, I’d like to point out that our Support Team is VERY much active and can ALWAYS be found and is doing the best to kick-ass on the replys. I, myself, even jump in daily to help get the number of tickets down. We are a Toy Company that does many other items than just the Sky Viper, and coming through the Holidays, we get slammed no matter how many people we have on the phones, chats, or email.

We’ve only seen one ticket come through customer support with this issue before, and while we’ve asked for the TX to be sent to us for a replacement, we haven’t received it yet.

Thank you,
Matt

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Hi Scott,
I’m the author of the transmitter firmware, so if there is a software bug in it (which seems likely given your description) then it will be my bug.
As Matt said, you can return it and we can look at it, or if you prefer to work on debugging it yourself then I can go through it with you. First step would be to open it up and attach a debug serial cable (you’ll need to solder on some wires for that) so you can look at the startup messages. Let me know if you want to go that route and I can provide details on how to start the debugging. If a serial link doesn’t help then you’d need a stlinkv2 programmer to be able to read and write code on the STM8.
The design of the software is meant to prevent bricking from being possible, but there is always the possibility of a bug.
Cheers, Tridge

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I should also say that if you are a developer, the transmitter firmware source code is here:


If you’re not a programmer that’s fine of course, you can send it in and we’ll try to work out what is wrong. I just never know on these forums if someone is a coder or not. If they are a coder often they would prefer to debug things themselves.
Cheers, Tridge

Well this is the type of response I was looking for from the support team at skyrocket. Instead I just got “be patient we’ll answer in the order your request came in” that was 2 weeks ago.

Anyways, I’m still waiting on a replacement from my retailer or i would have already taken it apart or would certainly ship it to you. It looks like they may not require me to ship back the broken one, so if not, I’ll ship it to you.

I definitely want to help you guys diagnose it. I had assumed that maybe it was something I did until others said the same thing.

Anyways, i know you guys are doing your best. As both an engineer and a business major I know predicting demand can be challenging, but skyrocket is WAY behind on supporting their products from their main page. Phone line doesn’t work and emails go unanswered (barring the message I mentioned before). And that isn’t just a Christmas problem, they’ve been unable to keep replacement parts in stock for years, I never could buy replacement props for my m200. But I’m holding out hope because I like this product.

As soon as I find out from Academy if I have to ship the broken one back I’ll let you know. Until then I certainly won’t be opening the transmitter and soldering. :smiley:

BTW, please know that I’m enthusiastic about this product. I want it to succeed. It’s a great gateway hobby! I’ve been advertising it on the /r/multicopter and /r/skyviper subreddits and on rcgroups.com
I’ve also been watching the commits to try to spy out what new products are being developed.

interesting that someone noticed!
you can do “flip” stunts in the current model btw - just assign it to an action button in the web UI

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Just make sure you have a good amount of altitude before flipping. :wink:

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Just a suggestion, perhaps bringing that serial line out as USB in the next model would be a good idea…still waiting on Academy to send my replacement :frowning:

Edit: They are finally sending a replacement, but wouldn’t let me keep the broken one, so i can’t send it to you. sorry.

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@lordneeko Matt and I finally received a bricked transmitter back from a user and we have found the issue. I have posted a fix for the problem here:
https://discuss.ardupilot.org/t/unbricking-a-skyviper-transmitter/25340
sorry it took so long to find this!

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