FrSky EU or non EU FW

[ched]

A couple of months ago I bought a x-lite S tx (ACCESS) and it's great.
I have been looking at little rtf quads and they all seem to come with non EU rx. OK so the spi rx are not great but they would work for short range.

So the question is should I flash the tx to the international FW while I only have 2 rx to flash or just buy better rx for any new quads?

Cheers for any advice.

[Bad Raven]

In the absence of other reply, I'll comment, though I'm not sure I can really help much.

As you know, I have three FrSky transmitters, an early Taranis X9D and two Horus X12S, one an early development model with updated internal hardware.  The second production X12S is dated into the "Euro only" firmware breakpoint and is running Euro firmware.

ATM all are only on now quite old firmware, and to point, I have no intention of willingly updating further and so going to ACCESS. I object to being forced to stop using non-FrSky product on the principle that they do not provide cost effective means to the product I need.

For example, I have a lot of sub 150mm quads, near all either made from cheap Chinese parts or near RTF product which uses pre-Euro only hardware.

As the law stands, pre-Euro use is limited to older Tx, as the law is not retrospective. Hence my use of older firmware.

The issue is that recent Tx either cannot be back-modded to pre-Euro (hardware should prevent it to be legal) or it is illegal to do so.

How any of this is remotely "policeable" is another matter.

I assume that if the OpenTX guys have not already got OTX working to various iterations under Access, they are developing it. No help now as I have not gone near Companion or firmware update for well over two years!  Used to be a tick box to allow D8.

This is the area you need to investigate if you have not already done so. I would suggest it might if your hangar is relatively small be best to change those Rx that are not ACCESS capable now.

[ched]

Thanks very much for the reply Bad Raven.
The X-lite S I have is ACCESS as you say but it also does ACCST in D16 mode. So far I only have 2 R-XSR rx (ACCESS EU-LBT) and a FrSky USB XSR-SIM (D16 - EU-LBT).
I have no problems with any of the ACCESS stuff as I have no legacy or 'cloned' rx. I am sort of in 2 minds about ACCESS as it will be good when OTA FW upgradable rx are more normal and I don't really have an issue with FrSky protecting their work by encryption i.e. why should they invest in new stuff when as son as they create something new people copy it? The problem is about backwards compatibility. If they would only let ACCST in D8 mode work on newer TX everything would be fine.

As for OpenTX the companion (2.3) seems fine to me but then again I am very new to it.

The problem I think I have is that I have ordered a TinyHawk Freestyle which comes with a spi rx. I think that if I use BF 4.0.3 or above I can use a cli to set rx to be EU-LBT compatible but there isn't much info about it at all even on GitHub. So I have ordered a XM+ in case.
I was also thinking about an indoor whoop style quad as weather has been so bad but again they tend to come with spi rx. Seems mad that I have to buy a new rx for each micro just because of EU-LBT. I think I have seen a video from Albert Kim who seemed to suggest that the international FW on ACCESS tx can do ACCST D8 mode!!!
Think I need to investigate more, I suppose first thing to do is work out how to backup all tx settings (radio module, open tx, and models) then start playing.

Anyway thanks very much for your reply. It was very helpful.

[ched]

OK so after a bit of watching Youtube flashing EU FW it appears it's impossible to use ACCST D8 mode. ACCST D16 mode is fine.
It appears that D16 is available in International FW and EU-LBT FW. So what I need to do is select D16 in my tx and then select SPI rx (Receiver Mode) then FrSky X LBT (SPI receiver provider) in BetaFlight. That should let me bind my X-Lite S (ACCESS) radio in EU-LBT D16 mode!!!

That should work but as far as I am aware the EMAX SPI Receiver on the Freestyle is only compatible with FrSky D8 mode!!!! So I might have to use the XM+!!!!!

Looking at the CrazyBee F4 AIO boards with spi rx it looks like betaflght v4.0 (date 2019-04-11) onwards gives a FrSky_X option that should give ACCST D16 mode (maybe need to disable telemetry).
Here is the GitHub page for info: https://github.com/betaflight/betaflight/blob/master/docs/FrSky%20SPI%20RX.md

So that's all as clear as mud...................

I think I am starting to understand that the 2 communication protocols (ACCST and ACCESS) are just the languages used between tx and rx.
The International vs EU-LBT FW is the way the actual radio tx works. ie. the EU_LBT tx just waits to 'hear' an rx 'signal' before it will hook up to transmitt/'talk'. The International just starts transmitting as soon as it's powered on irrespective of if there is anything to 'talk' to.

So when the EMAX Freestyle arrives I will backup all settings and note BF version number. Then, if necessary, flash to BF 4+ and see if I cam bind to the onboard spi rx.

I will create a new thread when it arrives.

[shawdreamer]

I object to being forced to stop using non-FrSky product on the principle that they do not provide cost effective means to the product I need.