Skyviper Fury Board Hacking, Firmware Questions, and Teardown Pictures

ArduCopter SkyViper
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Hi everyone,

So recently I purchased a skyviper fury. As I understand it, this drone runs a version of ardupilot and flies using the optical flow sensor. I was pretty impressed with it’s ability to hold position and was hoping to do some bench testing with the internal board and sensor. I have torn down the drone since it only cost me $29.99 and I would love to be able to upload custom firmware for testing. With that being said I have a few questions that hopefully someone can answer.

Does anyone know what the waf board type is to build for this aircraft? I found this in another thread but am not sure which is correct https://discuss.ardupilot.org/t/build-ardupilot-for-2018-scout/34586

yes, use this branch: https://github.com/SkyRocketToys/ardupilot/commits/skyviper2018
build it with: ./waf configure --board skyviper-f412
then: ./waf copter

then another comment stating:

I think skyviper-f412 is for Journey GPS and skyviper-f412-512k is for Scout.

Is scout build the same for fury? I am inclined to assume it is since it flies via the same optical flow sensor, the only difference being the onboard streaming camera on scout.

What is the default flight mode for this aircraft? Is it using flow hold?

What is the type of sensor on-board? Based on reading commit notes on the skyrocket ardupilot repo, I assume it is a Pixart 3901 and if so, does anyone know of an off the shelf version of this sensor for use with regular pixhawk flight controllers?

This question is a little more technical, can anyone recommend a method for identifying the pads labeled as CN10 in the images below? I am hoping it is the usb port, but I can’t be sure. Is there any way to identify these pins? Maybe with an oscilloscope? If anyone knows, please let me know.

IMG-2561
IMG-25611477×2167 753 KB

Back Side of Board

IMG-2563
IMG-25631659×2442 904 KB

Front Side of Board w/ Downward facing sensor

Final Question, I am assuming I would have to flash firmware via the debug pads on the front side of the board with my black magic probe, unless CN10 is a USB interface.

If anyone has any experience with these new skyviper products or insight into my questions, any information would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks everyone,
James

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I’ve not done this, but if I needed to know, here is how I would go about determining the function of those pads: Since the MCU package allows access to it’s pins, you should be able to lookup the pin assignments (either find the pins that can be assigned to USB in the data sheet, or the pins actually assigned by the ardupilot HAL layer code) and simply use a multi-meter to determine which pad is connected to which pin.

I do think your guess of USB is a good one. If you wanted to take a shortcut with some risk, you could even just check which pad is ground and guess the standard layout from there. The people who lay out PCBs tend to be fairly rational :slight_smile:

@Matt_M or @tridge, can you save James some trouble?

Let us know what you learn!

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Hi James!

CN10 is our DEBUG port. Here is the pin-out (Pin 2 is VBAT) :
CN10

And also, the boards in the Fury and Scout are the same, yes. The Journey has the larger memory to allow for the GPS code to fit.

1 Like
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What do I need in order to access the the debugging pad

5

@Matt_M I have moded my skyviper fury with a fpv cam but the batt life is junk (batt only discharges to 3.9v) how do I fix?