I am struggling to get Walksnail Vrx to reliably display OSD. It freezes up after few minutes into the flight.
My setup:
Matek F405-wing, running 4.3.3 Firmware.
Serial1 and UART1
OSD_Type 5
Serial_Protocol 42
Baud rate 115
VRx firmware = 29.33.16
HW version 3.0
Loop recording off
720P@60fps
700mW
flying within 1-mile of radius.
My Walksnail receiver is very new to me so I am not yet an expert on the system. But in my case it is working fine.
I am running the lastest firmware found here: https://avatar-firmware.d3vl.com/, which is 31.36.8 at this moment of writing.
I also use Arduplane 4.4 beta running on a Matek F405-WSE. 4.4 is not a voluntary choice; I used the firmware builder (https://custom.ardupilot.org/) to include pluscodes in the F4 build, and that gives you a 4.4 build.
So far no issues.
I received this email reply from Walksnail:
“Ardupilot osd still has some issues, need to wait for fixes
Setting small amount of osd can improve this problem, or format vtx”
I really don’t understand the last sentence?
I think they mean fewer enabled OSD items. No idea about the ‘format VTX’ part, I think they mean the 'format SD/VTX’items in the recording menu.
For Ardupilot it is just another MSP Displayport target; it is not likely that Ardupilot is causing the issues. So the issues are most likely in the WS firmware. I have not used any other firmware (my WS VRX is a week old and flashing recent firmware is always one of the first things I do), but I do not have issues (yet…) except a flicker here and there.
It is quite trivial to try the firmware files from the d3vl link in my previous post and revert in case of issues, so I suggest you try that?
For what it’s worth (probably not much), I’ve been using MSP OSD with DJI hardware for about the past year through several firmware updates and have had no issues. ArduPilot support is a bit limited, but adequate.
I have updated my VRx/VTx with the beta FW 31.36.8. I will test weather/work permitting.
@DaBit I tested the beta firmware today, good thing was that the beta FW didn’t took over the flight controller and flew my plane over Alaska/Canada (Just kidding).
Bad news, beta FW was even worst than the released FW, not only I was losing the OSD, but also the video at 1200mW at line of sight.
I did not try the 1200mW setting yet, only up to 700mW. I have not flown further than 2km, at which point I had no loss in video quality at all.
General consensus seems to be that 25Mbit/720p/<=700mW/channel other than CHP is the most stable combination of settings. My experience with WS is too short to confirm or deny that. Here is a DVR of a part of that 2km flight, done with 25Mbit/720p/60fps/700mW/CH1/stock antennas/VTX powered by the Matek F405-WSE 12V output: Nextcloud
You can compare video and OSD reception quality with your own setup.
Are you sure that your hardware is OK? If you are also losing video(quality) at short distance, the freezing OSD might just be a symptom of a bad radio link and not an isolated issue. WS drops sideband information such as OSD first before it drops the video.
Airside antennas mounted correctly at 45-deg angle, antennas free of obstructions, all of them the right polarisation (WS VRX uses LHCP for the patches so using LHCP antennas for the rest of the system makes most sense), clean powersupply to the VTx, sufficient cooling of the VTx, u.fl connectors snug, no sharp bends in the coax cables, …
If all that is OK, the only difference between your setup and mine is the Arduplane version. I don’t think the AP version is your issue, but you might want to check if some improvements to MSP OSD were made in v4.4-dev compared to v4.3.2
(as mentioned before I used the firmware builder to create an F405 binary capable of doing pluscodes, and the firmware builder gives you 4.4-dev)
I have requested Race Day Quad to return my unit back. I have tried pretty much everything you have mentioned above with no success.
Here is the last video and pics of my plane setup. Video ended because I lost video link. This happen twice.
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1X92g68a6hOt5HPJwFJaeMbfF_JDHKG2L?usp=share_link