Hi all! I have been working for about a week getting my SIYI HM30 repeater combo bound and functional. I wanted to put this out here as a PSA to anyone else who purchased the combo because there are a few mistakes I made that they can avoid and there are zero user tutorials or forum documentation on these units that I could locate and the official documentation for the repeater versions is about 3 paragraphs in the middle of the standard HM30 manual.
I would also like to say that my units work as intended now and that the SIYI official support from the Ardupilot forums and support from RC-Wing, my resellers, was responsive and excellent in getting me up and running. SIYI direct support was, well… very good at directing me to Ardupilot and RC-Wing support.
So I’m in the process of DIYing a fairly sophisticated quadcopter for use in a very mountainous area with dense vegetation. Pure range isn’t a big concern, but signal penetration is a big deal as is a low(ish) latency signal repeating function allowing us to operate at low altitudes in adjacent valleys without having to constantly relocate the ground station. I have used SIYI cameras and air units in past projects and the ability to run TCP/IP directly through their link is essential, so when SIYI came out with a “repeater” version of their system it seemed like the perfect fit for us!
I ordered the combo and immediately ran into some difficulties with binding in repeater mode. I first bound all HM30 units and air units in regular mode, and even to some older units I already had and everything worked fine which seemed to rule out a hardware problem. So my next usual go to solution is to make sure the firmware is updated and consistent across the devices, so I went to SIYIs site and downloaded the HM30 firmware pack and the SIYI assistant and proceeded to flash the firmware…
ALERT DO NOT ATTEMPT TO CHANGE FIRMWARE FOR THE REPEATER UNITS UNLESS EXPRESSLY TOLD TO DO SO BY SIYI SUPPORT! THE “REPEATER COMBO” FIRMWARE IS NOT THE SAME AS THE REGULAR HM30 FIRMWARE AND IS NOT AVAILABLE ANYWHERE ON THE INTERNET AND CAN ONLY BE OBTAINED DIRECTLY FROM SIYI (its actually even more complicated than that, its only available to resellers, who then have to petition SIYI corporate support on your behalf, even SIYI regular support cant give you the firmware). ALERT
Please SIYI, I love your hardware, but this really needs to be expressed somewhere in the documentation, on or in the box, and on the firmware website. Updating firmware with the latest releases from the manufacturer is basically standard practice and many people will try to do what I did until it is made clear. In fact calling the repeater version HM31 or differentiating that it is different hardware and uses different software than the HM30 would go a long way towards keeping others from making the same mistakes I did.
I now have one HM30 with firmware 2.3 and one HM30 with firmware 2.4 (to be clear, Both units came in the same “repeater combo” and originally both shipped with 2.4 firmware, but now one has 2.3 firmware, the firmware mismatch does not seem to affect the use cases I have tried so far so I ABSOLUTELY will not be messing with the firmware again unless some necessary functionality requires it.
Then once I got the firmware squared away, the real game started. lol
So to bind in “repeater” mode, here are the steps. (I have greatly expanded the detail of how to do this over the HM30 manual, this set of steps that led to a successful bind in “repeater mode” is the culmination of 20-30 attempts of methodically changing various settings and doing steps in different orders. To say the documentation is lacking would be an understatement. Just getting SIYI direct support to understand that “repeater mode” and “relay mode” are not the same thing on their own hardware was an ordeal…
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Prepare two ground units (dual and repeater edition). I set the Rec.No. (Air Unit Number) to 6 on both units, number 6 had no other air units previously bound on each unit. (no clue if thats necessary, but it worked with my successful bind so YMMV)
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Turn on the repeater function switch on the first ground unit and set it as “Repeater” (I do not know what the repeater function switch is, I am assuming this is not a physical button, but that this means go to settings: RepeaterMode and set it to RPT)
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Turn on repeater function switch on the second ground unit and set it as “Ground”. (Again, just going to Settings: RepeaterMode: and clicking it twice to set to GROUND)
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The OLED display on both units says “Will take effect on next reboot” so I reboot both units, then wait, the unit set to GROUND displays channel 1 about a minute after startup, while the unit set to RPT displays LOADING
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I power on the air unit. The green light blinks 3 times indicating it is in relay mode as instructed by SIYI support. (press the bind button 3 times in succession to change air unit modes. 3 green flashes means multi mode (used for “repeater” “relay” and “multi operator” modes/ 2 green flashes means regular mode for binding with a single unit.)
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Hold down the bind button on the air unit until the unit starts blinking red rapidly.
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Put the unit set to “RepeaterMode:RPT” in bind mode (this is the bind mode in the setting menu, not the bind mode in the “MultiConnection” menu)
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Put the unit set to “RepeaterMode:GROUND” in bind mode (the settings bind) I have no idea if the order of the units going into bind mode makes a difference, but I suspect it does, so AIR UNIT bind 1st, then HM30 RPT 2nd, then HM30 GROUND last, all were set to bind within 10 seconds of the last unit.)
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When all three units are quickly blinking red, Binding will happen between the AIR UNIT and RPT UNIT first, then when the connection goes solid blue, binding will start on the ground unit.
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When all three units show solid blue, binding is complete.
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Unpower all units, then power back on starting with air unit, wait 5-10 seconds then RPT unit, 5-10 seconds then GROUND unit. If the HM30s are solid blue and display the same channel on the OLED and the air unit shows solid red/fast blink blue/solid green then everything should be good!
Now my units are working great and as intended in repeater mode and it seems like this combo should work well for my project!
Thanks Frank at SIYI, and RC-Wing for getting me going!
I will update this thread if there are any other quirks I find.