91

TCB Dev / Re: OP-Config Qt 6 upgrade

« Last post by FuzzyJack on December 31, 2024, 04:33:16 PM »

Hi Luke, yeah the high Dpi setting is deprecated in qt6 as it is supported by default so I removed that bit completely.

You will notice I removed a few other older bits like the doc creation scripts for the older versions.  I tend to find that leaving old versions around for a while is helpful but you rarely remove them again and they just hang around. Source control should handle that stuff for you so you can get them back if you need to.

I’m hoping you like the build script as well.  It didn’t take long to knock up and could be further improved potentially to also regenerate the help files and compile the code as well. 

I did have qt being able to build the release properly at one point but then it stopped working and I haven’t figured out why yet so I just used the debug version for now.

92

TCB Dev / Re: OP-Config Qt 6 upgrade

« Last post by LukeZ on December 31, 2024, 11:47:21 AM »

Hi Chris, I saw your pull request earlier and have been browsing the changes. Thanks for taking on yourself such a major challenge!

I myself probably have forgotten by now why I did or didn't do things in the past, but if I recall, some of the reasons I never updated previously was because of the loss of QtAssistant, and also because the one time I made a serious attempt, there were found to be some bugs in what was then the next version of Qt that caused other problems equally as bad as the screen scaling one. So it went nowhere, but the screen scaling issue has remained a pain for those users with high resolution monitors, and it if could be fixed it would certainly be a very worthwhile improvement. Nevertheless it has taken the energy of a motivated person such as yourself to move this forward. Indeed, yours is the first pull request received on any component of the entire Open Panzer project since its inception a decade ago, so I congratulate and thank you once more!

By the way, I see you posted a thread about QtAssistant nearly a year ago, which I somehow never noticed! My sincere apologies.

Anyway, I am going to install the newer version of Qt and see if I can compile your branch and do some testing. If I need to make changes I believe it should be possible for me to push to your pull request (or at any rate make a pull request to your fork), so we can continue development there until such a time as it's ready for merging.

It might take me a while to remember all the things I've forgotten which were necessary to even get Qt to run, but I'll keep you posted.

93

TCB Dev / Re: OP-Config Qt 6 upgrade

« Last post by FuzzyJack on December 31, 2024, 09:48:42 AM »

Of course....   Blooming Windows Security.

By default the Flash function tries to download the HEX file into the /firmware folder of the current application.   Which when it has been installed using the OPConfig_Setup.exe a) doesn't exist and b) wouldn't allow a non system admin to write to it within elevating permissions.

It can be workaround by manually creating the firmware directory and granting write permissions to All Users.

Might be a way to get the InnoSetup to do this by default or set the firmware directory to a folder that does allow the download?

94

TCB Dev / OP-Config Qt 6 upgrade

« Last post by FuzzyJack on December 31, 2024, 09:27:34 AM »

Afternoon,

I tried to use the latest OP-Config with the new board from Torro and found that even though the latest version had the High DPI fix in it I still got the weird old formatting issue, which was strange.   So I had a bit of a tinker and I have upgraded the whole application to Qt 6.8.1 (Using Qt Creator 15).

I know on previous blogs there may have been some other reasons Luke hasn't previously upgraded the software level but I'm not totally sure what those reasons are.

I had to make a couple of small changes to the code to handle some deprecated functionality (QRegExp needed replacing and some of the currentIndexChanged functions no longer support QString) and I corrected a couple of items in the help files as well.

There was one initilization routine that was setting a QByteArray to values of '\0' that crashed the whole app.   I couldn't see why this was actually needed and commenting it out has made things work so that might need a look into later.

I had previously looked at using the QHelpEngine API for the documentation to get around using the Qt Assistant but it turned out it might be quite a lot of work to figure out how to open a new window with that in it so instead I worked our from the old InnoSetup post and a few other docs how to build the application and a include Assistant.exe and the required libraries as part of the installer.   I've scripted it and included all of the extra files needed to be able to produce the setup.exe automatically.

It's actually a bash shell script i run in gitbash on windows rather than a bat file but that was just because I could more easily do stuff like use which to find files on the path without having to figure out how to do that in Windoze.

I've branched from the master branch into my own repo and generated a pull request of my changes here:  https://github.com/OpenPanzerProject/OP-Config/pull/1

I need to do a little more testing with it I think but the core functionality works.  There are a couple of things niggling at the minute that I need to look at.

1) Connecting to the TCB directly is flakey and doesn't work very often at all.  There were a couple of small changes due to deprecation of functions in the SerialPort library so it might be related to that.   However, using snoop first and then connecting seems to work pretty much every time so that is the already known work around.

2) Downloading the latest hex for the TCB claims to work but "can't save" the file.   I need to look into that one.

I don't know what the numbering strategy is for version control at the moment and I figured a major upgrade of the software is probably big enough to increment to 0.94.0 which I have done for now but obviously that can be changed.

Hope that all makes some sense anyway and if anyone has chance to test it and find any issues let me know.

I have this working with the new TCB and need to fit it in to my Sherman but I may also be looking again at using some separate components and different sound options again.  Currently using the Taigen card and the engine running sounds are a bit more limited than I thought they might be.   Better than sounding like a Henglong Tiger 1 though!

95

Open Panzer Help / Re: Flysky FS-i6S 2,4G 10CH AFHDS 2A Sender

« Last post by LukeZ on December 27, 2024, 10:16:03 AM »

Hi Paul, yes this transmitter will with Open Panzer, I have used it myself. Select any FlySky receiver that has iBus, such as the FS-A8S, FS-iA6B, or the FS-iA10B. There are probably others as well. All of them will give you 10 channels with iBus, even if the receiver is otherwise listed as 6 channels.

96

Open Panzer Help / Flysky FS-i6S 2,4G 10CH AFHDS 2A Sender

« Last post by kettenpaul on December 26, 2024, 03:54:00 PM »

Hallo Fans
Hat sich jemand mit der Flysky FS-i6S 2,4G 10CH AFHDS 2A Sender befasst.
Wird dieser Sender mit dem OP Configurator funktionieren.(Erkannt werden)
Ist Ja auch das AFHDS 2A Protokoll

97

News & Announcements / Re: OPEN PANZER Tank Control Board from TORRO

« Last post by LukeZ on December 18, 2024, 02:44:33 PM »

Hi Fuzzy, thanks for those pictures, that's interesting to see. 

The included cables are exactly the same ones that used to be included with the Hobby King board, so that is good.

The page that talks about the ferrites and heatshrink is the same information I remember from the report I mentioned in the other thread. To be clear to anyone wondering about all these precautions, I take the liberty of informing everyone that these ferrite cores, the whole-board heatsrhink, and the other recommendations about wire routing, are NOT NECESSARY and can be ignored entirely. It's absurd they even have to be included, especially the cores which cost money and are just going to end up in the trash, but this is the state of things in the world we live in.

Their ostensible purpose is not to protect the board itself, but rather to protect your neighbor's pacemaker (as user Bayou so colorfully put it). But if our neighbors have survived carrying cellphones in their pocket and 5G radiation flying every direction all around us, they will probably survive our toy tanks.

(PS: The forum can't accept video files directly, though you can embed YouTube videos. Don't put yourself to any trouble on that account, I appreciate the information you've provided!)
 

98

News & Announcements / Re: OPEN PANZER Tank Control Board from TORRO

« Last post by FuzzyJack on December 17, 2024, 03:22:25 PM »

Unboxed this afternoon.

If others are interested I took a short video of the unboxing and some images of the cable set that is included.  Not sure the video will attach here though.

I took a picture of the page that talks about all the wires having to exit at the same end of the board (when the connectors are clearly spread around all 4 edges, that's fun) and the use of the iron ferrite cores to avoid electro magnetic interference.   Those are clunky as hell.    Not sure if this is meant to protect the board from interference or protect everything else from the board.

Either way I don't believe you get any of that with the henglong boards or other manufacturers so hey ho.

I'm also intrigued by the massive piece of heat shrink tubing they supply.  This "must be applied over the whole board".  I get that you want to protect the board but really?  Seems a bit overkill?

99

News & Announcements / Re: OPEN PANZER Tank Control Board from TORRO

« Last post by LukeZ on December 17, 2024, 08:04:23 AM »

Right, the VAT that Torro includes would only be for EU deliveries, but to anywhere else they should remove it from the sale price and let the postal carrier (or FedEx in this case) charge you for your home country. So it looks like they did everything correctly.

As for the extra charges from FedEx, I have had the same when importing items into France from outside the EU. It is very annoying, and nearly impossible to get a clear description of what they are doing, but at the end of the day FedEx is just charging you for having rendered you the "service" of charging you VAT and duties. In my view it's basically a scam, as you've already paid for shipping which should include all this. But there's no avoiding it. In my experience DHL is even worse. The best, at least in France, is to have thing shipped through the national postal service, who doesn't add any of this extra baloney. But we can't always choose how a seller will ship.

Anyway, I hope you enjoy the board!

100

News & Announcements / Re: OPEN PANZER Tank Control Board from TORRO

« Last post by FuzzyJack on December 17, 2024, 12:48:24 AM »

There I was thinking ooh that was easy and the board was due for delivery today when up pops an email from FedEx asking for some money due to the VAT and some import fees.   Bummer.  😂

Naturally being a suspicious person getting emails like that always raises an eyebrow but it looks legitimate.

The Torro page with the price on it says the price includes 19% VAT though so I may need to check what the heck they are charging extra for as it claims to be included..... hmm.

Checked on the Torro website with the language set to English etc and the items clearly state the price includes 19% VAT (screenshot) so I have emailed Torro to have ask.   I'm hoping it's just a cock-up and I get reimbursed but we shall see.

Doh....   Just checked the invoice on the order and all the prices are exclusive of VAT on the invoice so I correctly wasn't charged VAT in Germany and the duties into the UK are correct and expected.

The extra "disbursement" charge of £12.75 and another £4 odd for the FedEx fee (can't see the exact value now) is a bit annoying though.

Plus the currency conversion charged by Paypal pushes the cost up a little more for those in the UK so bare this in mind if you order one.