1

Open Panzer Help / OP-Config not finding I-Bus radio with an FS-A8S and Arduino Mega

« on: January 09, 2024, 03:01:11 PM »

I have been trying to get OP-Config working with an Arduino Mega standard board (well I say standard it’s an “Elegoo” model rather than Arduino) and it fails to read the radio when trying to use I-bus.

I’m using a FlySky i6s with a FS-A8S as per the recommendations on the wiki.  I have the output mode set to PPM and Ibus for serial.  I connect the ibus cable to pin 15 as per the guide for Arduino but op-config fails to find the radio.

If I connect the ppm cable to pin 3 it finds it ok and can read the data ok.  Ppm of course only gets the 8 channels and I was hoping to use ibus to make use of the extra couple of switches.

Before I go trying to diagnose if pin 15 is even getting a signal or if the receiver/transmitter are even talking ibus is there anything I am missing or any known issues/workarounds?

Pretty sure the code on the TCB project is set to subs initially by default and the tries ppm and ibus.  Not sure which it tries next but it either isn’t getting ibus or not seeing it on pin 15.   

Might have to go and put some diagnostics in the radio class to see if it’s even trying or if the receiver is duff.

2

TCB Dev / QtAssistant/Help Files

« on: January 04, 2024, 02:42:40 AM »

Following previous conversations about the OP Config tool, I have been having a nosey at the Qt Assistant issue and why the help files no longer work.

Turns out the use of QtAssistant is more intended to be used on machine that has Qt installed specifically but you can (and as Luke has) bundle the Assistant application as part of the build.   There is also a QtHelpFile API in the Qt suite now that can be used to display the content of helpfiles within any type of window you like but will take a look at that later.

Poking the current deployed version of OPConfig on my machine I have tried to launch the qch collection file using the Assistant.exe included in the build and get a library error initially (see attached files) but that is because I ran the assistant from within the assistant folder.  The library file it moans about is in the main directory and if you run the assistant from there it works although the actual display then has no content.

The actual application uses assistant\assistant to call the tool anyway so that's probably correct, why the qch file appears to be empty is different.

I get the same if I use the actual QtAssistant on my Qt install to point at the deployed qch file as well so not sure why the qch file would be empty or perhaps it is just because I haven't specified a page in the call but on a newly generated qch I don't need to so that's strange.

If I generate a new qch file in the source I get output but most of the links in the TOC don't actually work and try to open an "untitled".   Turns out in the qhp file each of the sections is referenced using .\ in the file location which appears not to be working.   removing the .\ renders the section links operable again.

e.g.
<section title="Program Layout" ref="./formlayout.html"></section>   -- doesn't work
<section title="USB Drivers" ref="drivers.html"></section>                -- works

I'm also getting some interesting output in some of the help files where certain graphics or links are used (DodgyGraphics.png).

The HTML file itself displays fine so it looks like rendering of the h4 heading type in the css is a bit broken.  Somef  othe spacing is as as well on other pages and the fonts appear to be a but up and down.

The h4 entry is meant to be non-repeating but it appears to be ignoring it:

h4
{
   margin: 0px;
   padding: 0px;
   border: 0px;
   margin-top: 20px;
   margin-bottom: 10px;
   font-size: 18px;
}
h4.entry
{
   padding-left: 15;
    background: url('images/h4_icon.png');
    background-repeat: no-repeat;
}

These all look very much like issues that probably were absolutely fine on older versions of the application 8 years ago but Windows and/or Qt have moved on and things have gone a bit squiffy.

Fun fun fun :-)

3

TCB Dev / High DPI Issue

« on: January 02, 2024, 02:21:57 AM »

I searched the forum and couldn't find anything specifically about this but when using a computer with a high DPI or resolution the OP-Config tool may not display properly as it fails to scale both the window and the fonts to handle the high resolution.

I downloaded the Windows installer version and got this on Windows 10 Professional running on Bootcamp on a MacBook Pro running at 2880 x 1800 pixels. (See attachment NoScaling.png).

I know Luke is aware of this issue because there is a fix sitting in the code waiting to be used and a comment about how he couldn't test it at the time due to still compiling on qt 5.4.   That change was made 8 years ago of course and the code isn't currently regularly updated.

But if anyone does stumble into this like I did getting Qt installed and working isn't too hard (although I have used Qt 5.15.2 at the moment as the release 6 of qt looks to be a more comprehensive upgrade and I haven't got the environment setup correctly just yet for it to compile with that).

A few quick notes on that:

• There is a commercial version of Qt and an Open Source one.  Clearly this is open source so you need to use the online installer to install the open source one.  You will need to create a Qt account.
• If you do try version 6 of Qt then the SerialPort library is now an extra you will have to add in the custom installation or later using the Maintenance Tool
• The default user file in the current main repo isn't compatible with the newer versions of Qt so you get a warning when you open it.   The recommendation appears to be to delete the old *.user files and let it create a new one (there are some variable type changes from the old one)

I currently have OP-Config compiling and running on Qt Creator 12.0.1 with Qt 5.15.2 with a MinGQ 8.1.0 64 bit compiler.

I haven't tested the WinSparkle updater or tried to build an installer from this yet but may have a go.

I've forked the repo here with the High DPI change included (and WinSparkle updated to 0.8.1 because it complained when I was still using the old one) https://github.com/ChrisSwallowWL/OP-Config