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:
āArdupilot osd still has some issues, need to wait for fixes
Setting small amount of osd can improve this problem, or format vtxā
I really donāt understand the last sentence?
I think they mean fewer enabled OSD items. No idea about the āformat VTXā part, I think they mean the 'format SD/VTXāitems 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 (yetā¦) 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 itās worth (probably not much), Iāve 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 didnāt 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, ā¦
If all that is OK, the only difference between your setup and mine is the Arduplane version. I donāt 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
I experienced the same freezing of walksnail OSD on both Ardupilot and Inav so I suspect the problem is more likely in Walksnail and not in Ardupilot code.
Finally someone other than me that has experience freezing issue.
Iāve noticed it too. I figured it was my F405 getting overloaded so I was turning off things like smart RTL to see if that helped. No Joy. Havenāt been flying it enough to decide if it was an issue or just a me problem so thatās why I havenāt posted about it. Missed this thread or I may have spoken up sooner.
I also noticed that it can be cured by rebooting Walksnail goggles so itsā another hint itās probably not AP, but a WS problem.
I wrote about it (beside of other WS bugs like sometimes broken MP4 recording in the air unit) to support@caddxfpv.com, but so far no answerā¦
@rptacek @Allister or anyone else that has experienced OSD freezing, were you using the Walksnail goggles or the VRX. If you were using the VRX, which goggles you were using?
In my case, I was using the VRX with CobraX goggles (black).
Iām using Walksnai Avatar HD goggles and had OSD freze on them with Ardupilot, my friend has VRX and had OSD freeze on it with iNAV.
I donāt have the problem or rather I only had a problem with flashing OSD elements. By chance it turned out that the originally used SD card was too slow. Because more capacity was needed, I used a large and very fast card and to my surprise the problem was solved on the next flight.
Probably the problem is just that WS gets out of sync when the Goggles or VRX canāt do the video recording quickly. If I were you, I would try that first to see if a different card fixes the problem.
I am running ArduPlane 4.4.x and WS Goggle and VRX have firmware 34.x installed, so everything is up to date.
Iām using the same setup. VRX with CobraX goggles.
Iām getting problem with OSD elements randomly flashing each independenly when Iām with my plane far away (>10km).
I suppose this is probably due to dropped telemetry packets. See here a video example.
It would be nice if this is improved as itās very bothering and making me nervous. Probably caddx would need to extend ālifetimeā of the telemetry data before an OSD item is turned out in the Walksnail firmware.
Is it āOSD element flashingā you spoke about?
To me it sounds more like you experience flashing all OSD elements in the same rhytm, this I can imagine could be due to slow SD card. Can you describe it more?
I use in WS goggles the fastest SD card of all I have: Samsung EVO Plus SDXC 128GB UHS-I class 10 UHS U3 A2 V30 so I canāt test any faster.
In the close range (<3km) I canāt see any blinking so I donāt think what I have has anything to do with a SD card.
My goggles X are freezing - it seems to happen more often after they have warmed up for half an hour.
If im viewing the OSD the OSD will freeze but also the UI stops responding ie if I was in the goggles menu it freezes and the buttons all stop responding. Does anyone else get this on the new goggles X or is this the same issue on the previous goggles too.
I had the same problem with Skyzone cobrax goggles, after several tries to rectify the problem, I requested a refund.