Micoair743 GPIO, WS2812 LED connection

ArduCopter Copter 4.6
1

Hi!

I have a Micoair H743 flight controller. The drone has 4 motors.

Currently 4.6.2 is flashed to the FC.

There are a ton of serial ports, CAN, i2c etc ports on it.

How can I control the exposure of an externally mounted micro4/3 camera via a GPIO? On the pinout and port diagram there are no GPIOs listed. Can I somehow reconfigure an unused UART to GPIO?

Or can I connect a GPIO port extender, to have GPIOs?

I also would like to connect a few WS2812 addressable LEDs to have better visibility of the drone.

Can I connect these LEDs to any of M5-M10 pins?

Thank you!

2

There are several reference’s to look at for your questions.
The Ardupilot board specific page is usually more useful than the manufacturers doc:
Ardupilot MicoAir 743
The Hwdef.dat file is also very useful; use the link here Micoair 743 Hwdef It provides GPIO output pin numbers you will need. You can see all outputs are capable but be aware of the timing groups as you can’t mix them with other types of outputs.
Basic GPIO info here: GPIO’s
External LED’s here: External LED’s

3

Thank you Dave!

As far as I understand, Group1 is currently used for motor driving.

I can use Group2 for WS2812 LED controlling, and Group3 with maximum 4 GPIO signals for various purposes (eg. camera trigger, set camera parameters)

Is this correct?

Thank you!

4

…
Yes, exactly right!

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