Ultimate Devo F12E (devof12e-XMS) builds

New chip arrived today, just finishing fitting it.

Bit of pain in the arse to remove the old chip with just a 1980's chisel iron, but after fabricating a Heath Robinson styled copper wire tool wrapped around the tip of my iron it came off very easily. Soldering in the new chip was a bit of a faff, you really do have to bend those legs in a fair bit, and you need to get pad pads nicely cleaned and pre loaded with solder to get a good join.

For my first attempt at detailed soldering in years, it seemed to go ok, put the trans back together switched it on and loaded the firmware, switched off and on again into usb mode, the format the drive thing came up, did that and it failed to format! Dam it!, tried a few more time same result.

Took it all apart again inspected the soldered legs and found one of the legs didn't take fully, so re-soldered, put it all back together again, switched back on into USB mode again and it formatted perfectly! Phew!

Plus I don't have to use that Java installer anymore, which was a pain to work with.

With all the file system copied over it started a treat without any problems, all seems to be functioning as normal, although i did need to re-calibrate all the controls.

Nice work Vald

Vlad, since you haven't made a pull request yet but there seems quite some interest in this really simple (compared to devo7e-256 upgrade): What do you think of renaming it devof12e-extraflash or something like similar and use the already provided detection code in spi_flash.c and also include the Chips pointed out below? Seems like a small code change and would make this f12e mod a lot more universal and get rid of further in bindings (basically and of these flash chips with 16+ MBit should work fine).

Moeder wrote:

• ISSI IS25LQ032B : It should be compatible to IS25CQ032 which is already supported in the current code: Unfortunately it seems not to easy to get, the only bigger distributor who has it in stock is Mouser
• Adesto AT25SF321 : very small code addition necessary, but still the same problem of availability
• Cypress S25FL132K : very small code addition necessary, seems to be widely available (Mouser, DigiKey, RS components, Farnell to name a few)

Hi Vlad!

I just tested your latest firmware on my F12E without a problem. This one has no "Bright View" written anywhere written on it. It is white one with black frontplate, HW Version is 1.6.

The VTX side consists of a runcam 700tvl (don't know if pal or ntsc...) and an eachine 25mW VTX. I switched between your latest firmware build and the previous one back and forth and recognized the increased view (quad was always in same position). I will try some other VTX combinations as soon as possible.

Thank you once again!

Tested: It works!!

Just to be sure, I did not format the F12E drive when flashing but only choose "install Library" in Deviation Uploader.
Is that ok?

You can find attached two images, the "Old" one shows the screen on your FW from 2017-03-05, the "New" is with your latest FW.
Just for information: You can see the scaling of the image best when looking at the small hatch on the right side of the roomdoor.
In real life it is merely square like on the "Old" image. I would say the image quality is the same on both FWs, the differences on the two attached images are only caused by me (or my camera).
The wider view angle which is now displayed on the screen is very good for flying FPV in confined spaces.
(well, at least now you know what you hit before crashing ).

Thanks Vlad!

Hi Vlad!

Tested with both, a NTSC and PAL camera, each time used an eachine 25mW VTX: works!
You don´t have to select PAL or NTSC on the F12E, right?
Because it worked right away, I just had to select the right video channel.

Also tested it with a runcam attached to an ImmersionRC 600mW VTX, here I got no image.
But I also don´t get an image on my fatshark goggles which worked before with this setup.
I think the ImmersionRC VTX is damaged as a result of a severe crash it suffered some time ago.
I will try to repair this VTX if possible and test again.

After screwing up changing the chip and damaging the board I can finally say that I just joined the F12E 4mb club! Walkera support in the USA isn't very good. Ended up buying a used F12E off ebay just for the board. After reading/re-reading/ and re-re-reading the soldering guide at the beginning of this forum it all went well. Just installed the latest from Vlad, wow can't thank you enough for all your work and all others on this forum!!!!! I bound it to a Spektrum rx on my Ares Quad, went great. All I did was change the channel on the video and perfect image! This could be the coolest rc radio.....can't believe Walkera couldn't just upgrade the chip......oh well, keeps us creative I guess!!!!!