Weird Output from Dashboard Port

[Astronouth7303]

Something else: How do we know OI packets from RC packets? Or the beggining from 2 high user bytes? (Frame 2)
And I belive that you only get frame 3 20 times a second; the info is unlikely to change that quickly (Except pwm 15 & 16, but those are covered by frame 2).

[Ian W.]

Originally Posted by Astronouth7303

Something else: How do we know OI packets from RC packets? Or the beggining from 2 high user bytes? (Frame 2)
And I belive that you only get frame 3 20 times a second; the info is unlikely to change that quickly (Except pwm 15 & 16, but those are covered by frame 2).

Did you read the documentation?

Page 2, under notes...

"1. The IFI Dashboard Viewer now interprets the incoming data and changes the display window depending on the OI/RC jumper setting (located on the OI)."

Says right there how you know what packet (or packets) you're receiving, I'm sure you can find something in the packet stream to do it in software, but why bother when you can see it with your own eyes right on the OI?

You can tell the start of each frame by the two "flag" bytes. The first two bytes of each packet is 0xff,0xff while no where else in a packet can two consecutive bytes reach 0xff. That makes it very simple to find the beginning of a packet and keep yourself synchronized.

Infomation in Frame 3 is very important, actually. Two PWMs, the User Byte, the Battery Voltages (main and backup), and all the error codes (mostly in the Aux_Byte). Those are all pretty important, even if some is redundant. Plus, if I did infact create a bug that didn't display Frame 3 as much as the others, there'd be a problem, because what if next year Frame 3 was important? Just because something works now, doesn't mean you should leave it, make it work right. Also, if you get about 40 packets a second from the OI, it'd be more around 13 times a second to receive Frame 3, but that's a minor technical detail. Although, you receive Frame 3 just as many times as you receive the other frames in the stream, which I'm not sure you understood from the documentation that you obviously read.