Skip to content
This repository has been archived by the owner on Mar 17, 2021. It is now read-only.

blakecole-sik-radio: updated build and installation procedure #960

Closed
wants to merge 2 commits into from

Conversation

blakecole
Copy link

Updated SiK Radio Documentation to include caveats, build instructions, and usage instructions

@blakecole blakecole changed the title Blakecole sik radio blakecole-sik-radio: updated build and installation procedure Feb 25, 2020
- RFD900u
- RFD900ue

**SiK does not currently support RFD900x or RFD900ux telemetry radios**.
Copy link
Collaborator

Choose a reason for hiding this comment

The reason will be displayed to describe this comment to others. Learn more.

So are you saying that you have to use non-SiK firmware, or that you can't build your own SiK firmware (ie is the RFDesign software "non-Sik" or is is just prebuilt out of band?

Copy link
Author

Choose a reason for hiding this comment

The reason will be displayed to describe this comment to others. Learn more.

Good catch -- to clarify, I believe the RFD900x/ux still uses SiK firmware (they can be queried via AT commands, just like the other radios), but these radios are not currently supported by the tools and firmware that is packaged by default in the linked SiK repository.

There is a directory (SiK/Firmware/dst) that contains firmware for the older models (.ihx files), but does not contain firmware the RFD900x/ux (which, for whatever reason, RFDesign has chosen to release as .bin files). The newer firmware can be downloaded here: http://files.rfdesign.com.au/firmware/

Copy link
Collaborator

Choose a reason for hiding this comment

The reason will be displayed to describe this comment to others. Learn more.

OK, I've created #966 to get just this bit in for now. Hopefully Lorenz will provide advice on the rest at some point.

Thanks again for all your help.


The dependency tree is summarized here for reference:

- [SiK](https://github.com/ArduPilot/SiK)
Copy link
Collaborator

Choose a reason for hiding this comment

The reason will be displayed to describe this comment to others. Learn more.

Copy link
Author

Choose a reason for hiding this comment

The reason will be displayed to describe this comment to others. Learn more.

I linked to the https://github.com/ArduPilot/SiK base repository because it looked like it had been updated more recently (August, 2018) than the LorenzMeier fork (last commit: July 2017). They look pretty similar though.

@hamishwillee
Copy link
Collaborator

@blakecole Fantastic. Looks very helpful indeed - certainly a significant improvement. I gave it a bit of a layout tidy and added a couple of questions. Let's see what @LorenzMeier says - feel free to ping me next week if he hasn't reviewed.

@LorenzMeier
Copy link
Member

Thanks for putting this together. It’s not targeting the tooling we’re officially supporting and have tested. It’s also not aligned with the firmware auto-upgrading in QGC. This needs more work.

@hamishwillee
Copy link
Collaborator

@LorenzMeier That's cool, but who can we talk to in order to "do this right"?

Would you be OK at least with an intermediate version that includes the new "supported radios section" - so that at least people don't try to use it for RFD900x or RFD900ux?

@blakecole
Copy link
Author

Hi guys,

I'm glad my contributions are at least partially useful. I am a total neophyte, and don't really understand the subtle nuances of the toolchain. I don't really have a dog in this fight -- if you think my edits would save folks time in the future, feel free to implement them in the documentation; if not -- no worries!

Let me know if there's anything else I can do to help.

@LorenzMeier -- quick side question on the QGC firmware auto-upgrading feature. Is it currently operational? Does it only support certain radios? Does it fail if the pre-exisiting firmware is not supported? Reason I ask is, after I updated my firmware (using the RFDSiK V2.65 rfd900x.bin file available here: http://files.rfdesign.com.au/firmware/) using RFDesign Tools (Windows GUI application available here: http://files.rfdesign.com.au/tools/), I tried to test the QGC firmware update feature, and the update failed.

@hamishwillee
Copy link
Collaborator

I'm replacing (closing) this with #985, which is now assigned to Lorenz - either to explain what needs to happen or to make the update.

Thanks @blakecole - appreciate the help. This is linked and will be available as a resource when the final toolchain docs get done.

@blakecole
Copy link
Author

blakecole commented Mar 20, 2020 via email

Sign up for free to subscribe to this conversation on GitHub. Already have an account? Sign in.
Labels
None yet
Projects
None yet
Development

Successfully merging this pull request may close these issues.

3 participants