Good day! Previously, in this video, I went over how to set up telemetry values on your
RadioMaster TX16S main views and widgets. Today I'm going to demonstrate how to capture and save
any (or all) of the telemetry values from your flight using the process I'll call
"OpenTX telemetry logging." I'll explain what it is, how to set up OpenTX telemetry logging in just
two simple steps using my RadioMaster TX16S, and show you one of the many
uses of OpenTX telemetry logging that could actually help save your quad!
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So what is OpenTX telemetry logging? Well, it's basically just saving whatever telemetry values
you're getting from your telemetry receiver to your transmitter's SD card so you can use them
for whatever application or post flight analysis you want. What's nice about this OpenTX telemetry
logging is you can set it up in about 30 seconds and forget about it until you need it or want
to use it for something. For this video we're assuming you have both the telemetry receiver
and the GPS module receiver set up correctly on your quad. For today's demo I'll be using the
Crossfire nano receiver and the Matek SAM M8Q GPS module. With these two devices working properly,
these are the telemetry values I'm getting after I've "Discovered new sensors."
Now, you can choose which of these (or all of these) you want to save throughout your flight.
To do that, you just scroll down to the telemetry value and long press enter, then edit.
You can toggle on or off "log." If it's on, it'll save that telemetry value. If it's off,
it won't. Mine are all on by default and I'll keep them that way for this demo. That's our
first step - we're done! Our second step is to set up a special function. So, we go to our Special
Function Page, find any open line. Click on it. That'll take you to this first column where I
click enter and then I just flip my arm switch (F) as the device to activate the special function.
Click enter to escape and scroll over to the second column. We click enter and here
we want to find the entry for "SD logs." Right there. Then click enter to escape, scroll over
to the next column. This is where you'll want to establish how often you want your telemetry data
to be logged to your SD card. Since we have a GPS module on our Rattler XF build, I want to
make sure to save my GPS location about every one to two seconds. So here I'll put in 1.5 seconds,
press enter to escape and then return a couple times to get out of it. That's it! We're done
setting it up! Now we don't even have to think about it anymore. Anytime I arm my Rattler XF,
all the telemetry values for which I have "log" toggled on will be saved to the SD
card every one and a half seconds throughout the flight. All we have to do now is fly!
Then if we crash during an extended flight a good distance away in an unknown
area (hopefully not in the water) and we forget to press record on our DVR so that
we can see our last GPS position, all we have to do is go to our saved OpenTX telemetry log.
To do that, we press the two trim tabs together and the power button at the same time
then we connect the phone to the transmitter with a micro USB to USB-C cable like this.
Use whatever file manager app you have and, in my case, I've got an app called "File Manager"
and we're going to use that to open up the SD card log file. It automatically finds my TX16S
USB drive. Click on that and we want to go to the folder and in my case it's db26. Go to "logs"
and click on this .csv file for my Rattler XF. I've got another app which is like Excel
Spreadsheets called "Sheets" and it's asking me if I want to use that to open up my log
file. Yes I do. Up pops all of my telemetry values. We want to go to the GPS column
and find the last cell with the GPS coordinates on it.
So we scroll up and here it is. We want to copy these coordinates to our clipboard,
copy. Open up Google Maps and then just paste them into our destination. Get directions and
go find your quad! That's just one simple and effective use of OpenTX telemetry logging.
Another way to access your telemetry data on the SD card is through OpenTX Companion. So
we just run OpenTX Companion. Power on your transmitter like we did before with the trim
tabs and the power button. Connect it to your computer through the USB cable. Go to this icon
up here that says "View log file," then select the log file from your flight on the SD card.
It brings up all of our log telemetry data which we can then pick and choose to analyze post
flight. For instance, throughout our flight we can check out our altitudes, our speeds, our link
quality, and we can compare that to our location at that time, and things like that. Also, if you
have Google Earth installed on your computer, you can add its file path location to OpenTX Companion
here. Then you can click on this earth symbol down here and it'll bring up your flight in Google
Earth. Over here on the left you should see "My Places" and under that "Temporary Places." Your
flight should be here under "Temporary Places." Right click on that and select "Properties,"
"Altitude," and change "Absolute Altitude"
to "Relative to Ground." You can also change the style and color here as well.
Then up here you have your Player and click on this icon to play it.
You can also use your mouse to change your viewpoint,
zoom in, zoom out, and press and hold Alt and "U" at the same time to get a direct overhead view of
your flight. You can even save an image from this view by going to file, save image, and if
you'd like type in a title and a description. Then save it to a location on your computer.
So, that's OpenTX telemetry logging, how you set it up, and a few fun and useful things
you can do with it. Once you've set it up on your arming switch,
you'll have peace of mind knowing that if you need it (or want it) to find your quad or
analyze any aspect of your flight, it's readily available to you at any time. If you have other
ideas on how best to use this OpenTX telemetry logging feature put them down there in the
comments section below. Thanks for your time. I'll see you next video. Clear skies friend!