MinimOSD and APM problem...

[PaulJC]

Just wondering if anyone can help, i have a quad running APM2.5 with Arducopter 3.2.1, i have a minimOSD flashed with R800 and 3DR radio telemetry module, these are connected with a Y cable (RX only on the OSD).

My APM is powered by a power module and the MinimOSD has the solder tabs joined so is running 5v across the board.

If plugged in direct to the APM with both Tx & Rx connected the OSD functions completely normally...

If attached to the Y cable along with the telemetry radio the OSD boots up fine but it shows nothing but zero';s for data, this stays the same if connected to Mission Planner (1.3.25) or not...

If attached to the Y cable but with the telemetry radio unplugged I receive ';No mav data!';

I have ';enabled Telemetry'; within MP and also made adjustments to the settings of SR0 and SR1 and these seem to have made no difference.

Any ideas? I have tried searching without much luck?

[Jimmer]

I had the same problem, it seems some boards do not supply a decent enough signal level to drive both the telemetry and the OSD. I soldered header pins onto the UART 0 output on the board and fed my OSD from that - works great.

[PaulJC]

I had the same problem, it seems some boards do not supply a decent enough signal level to drive both the telemetry and the OSD. I soldered header pins onto the UART 0 output on the board and fed my OSD from that - works great.

Awesome, that i can try 

[PaulJC]

OMG i owe you massively, i';ve been pulling my hair out for hours trying to get this thing working and that done the trick straight away!! Thank You

[Jimmer]

Glad to be of help - a problem shared and all that lol.

[Chewy]

Hmmm, think i might give this a try too.  I have a Mavlink OSD here that i just haven';t been able to get going.  It came as part of a cheap APM kit from China.  Now i understand why it was cheap, none of it worked properly!  Being an electrical engineer, i';ve been slowly working through it, fixing all the faults.  I';ve had exactly the same symptoms, all zeros on the data or no mav data with the telemetry disconnected.  I was close to writing the OSD off and putting it in the bin, so it';s got to be worth a shot.

By the way, i found THIS THREAD over on the Ardupilot forums that has photos which show the solder points for future reference.

[firey1]

What you also may find is the split cable is wired wrong
I had 2 spliting cables to run osd and telemetry had both been wired wrong I just pulled the wires from the plugs re wired correctly and everything worked great

[Chewy]

Nah, checked the wiring, it was all correct.  Anyway, tried connecting straight the UART0 pads, still exactly the same as before.  I';m writing the OSD off as a bad-un...

[PaulJC]

Also changed the advanced settings within mission planner?

[Chewy]

Yup.  Believe me, i';ve wasted hours on this OSD.  It';s in the bin now to stop me wasting more time trying to get numbers on a screen instead of flying the bloody thing...

[PaulJC]

Mine took me absolutely ages to get working, i';m sooooo happy it works spot on now though...

[Hands0n]

I';ve just today fixed a persistent problem that loomed up on my TBS disco rendering it useless for FPV. 

The problem was two fold - one was the video picture tearing making it impossible to view. This worked originally but developed after a few months.  Also the minimOSD overlay would disappear during the flight, requiring a power on reboot of the entire multi-rotor to get it going.

Today I solved both issues.   I fitted an LC filter to the power for the VTX and Camera, the tearing stopped.   But the minimOSD continued to "crash".  So I fitted a UBEC to power the minimOSD as a temporary cluge to save me hacking another feed from the LC Filter output.   That didn';t work either, the minimOSD continued to crash, although differently now, the overlay persisted, but simply stopped updating a few seconds after arming (it was fine before).

So after some searching with no good result I decided to update the minimOSD Extra firmware to the latest I could find, that being 2.4_r726 from here: https://code.google.com/p/minimosd-extra/downloads/list

That did the trick! I';ve got to think that the previous (stable) version I was running is no longer compatible with ArduCopter 3.2.1 (or possibly earlier!).   I have had over 40 minutes of flight with it this evening and it worked 100% throughout.

[red zeppelin]

HandsOn, sorry to revive an old thread but I think you have working what I am looking to set up.  Basically I want to add 1) telemetry link to android phone, 2) Video feed from camera to phone, and 3) OSD overlay onto video. 

I have been building the quad up over time and all is flying well, now on to the video and telemetry parts.  Right now I have a DBPower camera (knock off of a GoPro), I am not sure if it does video out but I think I can get the GoPro cable for that cheap enough to find out.  I know I need to get OSD, like minim or something and a telemetry module (TX and RX) like the 3DR one.

Question is, what does the wiring look like for all of this?  Also, if I can';t get real time video out from the DBPower camera, is there another suggestion on a camera that will record and transmit like that at the same time?  Thanks,