SpeedyBee F405 V3 Blackbox Logging Issues

[tepid ore]

I just finished a budget build with the SpeedyBee F405 V3 FC and I'm seeing the blackbox logging issues that I've read about others having. Running 4.4.0 with a SanDisk Ultra 16GB FAT32 SD card. The BB logs top out @ 4.2MB but only show as 5 seconds with lots of gaps in the data. Is this an issue with the FC itself?

Log file attached.

Diff all: https://pastebin.com/ziNrrSYt

[light jewel]

Hi granola，Here is Azol from SpeedyBee

Sorry for the inconvenience. We have received similar feedback from other customers. For the F405V3, SD cards are used to record the black box data, and there are two possible reasons for the issue:

1. The write speed of the SD card may not be fast enough, and BF requires that the SD card must be SDSC or SDHC, not supporting SDXC (which is the type of many high-speed U3 cards).
2. The frequency of writing to the black box may be too high. Please try using a 1/8 or lower rate to see if that helps.

I looked up your SD card online and it seems like the write speed is good enough. Can you send me your BlackBox settings so I can take a look？

[tepid ore]

Thanks @light jewel. I was running 1/4 logging rate (on a BMI270 gyro) with the rest of the logging settings default. Tomorrow I’m going to try at 1/8 and with a few data types disabled.

[light jewel]

@tepid ore Thanks for the info! Got it, I think 1/4 is already low enough to test if the issue is related to the write rate, but the problem still persists. I'll also check in with my colleague who handles after-sales tomorrow to get more info on this problem and update you here.

[digital creek]

You can try to disable some logged values that you may not need. Go get blackbox in CLI and turn some off.

[tepid ore]

Just disabled accelerometer, RSSI, and altimeter logging (magneto, baro, gps already N/A since this FW build excludes those)

[tepid ore]

Even @ 1/4 and with some BB items disabled I'm still getting corrupted logs. Also fighting an issue with Bluejay firmware on the ESC and smoked a motor today during testing, which happened right over a water puddle, so the quad took a dunk. Gonna need to do some rebuilding before getting it back in the air!

[digital creek]

tough. good luck.

[tepid ore]

Thanks! This was just a spare parts and budget electronics build, so no sweat. I think I’m going to avoid SpeedyBee electronics in the future. Mostly I’m racing and my race quads are all dialed in (still on 4.3, need to update to 4.4 eventually). Thanks for all you do @digital creek

[digital creek]

You're welcome. I have a speedybee F4 board that is in good working order. I'm not sure there is anything specifically wrong with them.

[tepid ore]

That’s fair — seems like it’s just this particular stack combo that has some gremlins. And I appreciate you @light jewel for the support here!

[light jewel]

@tepid ore I'm so sorry to hear about your drone crash. Do you have any DVR footage or black box files from that time? Also, could you send an email to [email protected]? My colleagues will follow up on your issue.

[viral fractal]

@tepid ore, @spring tartan
hi!

I've got exactly the same issue with SpeedyBee F405 V3: it does not record usable data. all log files are around 0-3 sec long with no data or with a lot of gaps in it.
I think I tried everything what I found on internet:

• I bought SD card with high write and read capability (SanDisk microSDHC Extreme 32GB)
• I set blackbox logging rate from 200Hz up to 1200Hz.
• I turned off gps, accelerometer, barometer, etc on the FC to reduce CPU usage.
• I turned off blackbox logging for every sensor and turned them on one-by-one.
• I tried different versions of Betaflight and Betafligh​t​ Blackbox Explorer.
  ​
  I cannot tune my drone and it cannot fly well...​

[tepid ore]

Here’s a thread on the Betaflight GitHub tracking this issue. Apparently the OSD and Blackbox share the same SPI bus, which means they’re competing for the same resources.

https://github.com/betaflight/betaflight/issues/12583

[viral fractal]

Thanks! I'll give it a try with OSD turned off.

[primal raven]

just shift it to pal

or ntsc

and try black box on 800

it will work

it pretty much worked for mr

[viral fractal]

turning off OSD worked with 1600. switching to NTSC didn't, there were no log files. I'll investigating a little more.

[viral fractal]

I checked again:
OSD off - blackbox on 1600 Hz: proper log files
OSD on (PAL or NTSC) - blackbox on 1600 Hz: no log files
OSD on (PAL or NTSC) - blackbox on 800 Hz: some files with proper length but gaps in them, others with only a few sec length

[modest sage]

thanks @viral fractal !! 😉

[light jewel]

@viral fractal I'm really sorry to hear that you're having trouble with our product. The F405V3 uses an SD card as its black box storage, and unfortunately, some of the cards on the market may have lower write speeds or be incompatible with the format, which could be causing the problem you're experiencing. Could you please try the solution outlined in this FAQ: https://speedybee.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/14339752094491-What-to-do-if-F405-V3-flight-controller-s-blackbox-can-t-be-recognized-or-generate-log-files-of-0KB-or-a-few-tens-of-KB- and let us know if that helps resolve the issue?

[viral fractal]

hey!

as I wrote, I bought SD card with high write and read capability (SanDisk microSDHC Extreme 32GB).
I just tested it: reading speed: 86,43MB/s, writing speed: 64,64MB/s

as it turned out the cause of the problem was this: https://github.com/betaflight/betaflight/issues/12583

[potent fulcrum]

Hi... OSD off means removing SD OSD and HD OSD from build options, and disabling OSD from config??? Tried build w/o SD OSD, or disabling OSD in configuration, same results, not a single useable file.

[potent fulcrum]

not matter if 800 or 1600Hz

[digital creek]

OSD off just means disabling the feature in the configuration file. But if the issue is shared SPI bus then you’d need to make a build with neither SD OSD or HD OSD enabled.

You can reduce the amount of data written by disabling fields in cli. You should test disabling everything except gyro. Make sure no debug is active as well.

Be sure to test with Betaflight 4.5 rc1. Forget about 4.4.

Let us know how you go with 4.5.

If the issue persists then give up on the idea of logging on this board. Disable logging and use it as a race board. It will be fine for that. Sharing an SPI bus with two time-expensive operations is going to cause issues. It can sometimes be acceptable with fast flash memory for the log. But writing the SD is slow. We are not doing large files sequentially. Each write is a single entity. That’s what makes it problematic. The continuous write speed is sort of irrelevant.

[unborn wyvern]

Hi folks
sorry to digg this thread up,

logging with an external device will avoid this issue or do we still have the same issue?

@tepid ore @viral fractal do you ever get this sorted out? a flying buddy got 2 of this stacks at a good price...(only to get stuck with hte logging issue 👀 )

[modest sage]

not fixable -- log with OSD turned off.
external UART logging should be possible, but may have it's own idiosyncrasies. (relatively slow and may contain gaps)
V4 hardware is fixed.

[tepid ore]

What @modest sage said. Turn off OSD when you need to log. Not ideal.

https://github.com/betaflight/betaflight/issues/12583#issuecomment-1659431153

[unborn wyvern]

Not ideal but I will deal with it...

[digital creek]

cut out all the values you don't need from the log to reduce the amount of data to be written, and don't log more than 500hz.

its an issue with SD card stuff, lots to read around the topic

[potent fulcrum]

I resorted to an openlager, worked perfectly fine.