LockDownRadioControl

A free, open-source radio control system you can build yourself

Flash a chip from your browser

Plug a Seeed XIAO ESP32-S3 into this computer with a USB-C cable and press one button. The browser writes the receiver and dongle software straight in: nothing to install, no command line.

Two steps

Never two power supplies

Unplug the board from the flight controller first. Never plug a computer into a board that is wired to a powered model.

  1. Put the board into flashing mode

    Hold down B, tap R, then let go of B. The two tiny buttons are beside the USB socket.

    Check: the yellow light goes out. (A red light may stay on or flicker: that is the battery charger; ignore it.) If the yellow one is still lit, do it again, holding B a little longer.

    Do this every time, even on a brand-new board. A board that already has our software takes the USB socket for its own use, so it offers no port without the buttons.

  2. Click

    The first time on a computer, the browser asks permission to reach the chip. There will be just one thing in the list: choose it. After that it remembers. It writes for about a minute. Leave it alone until it says it has finished.

     

If it says no chip was found

The board is not in flashing mode, or the cable is the wrong sort. Do B and R again and press the button once more. Still nothing? Try another USB-C cable: many short leads carry power only, so the yellow light comes on but nothing else happens.

This is also how you start again

It erases everything first. A board that is in use, confused, or being handed on comes back exactly as new. Day to day you never need this page: a working board updates itself over the air from the phone app.

Then what?

  1. Fit the aerial

    The little one in the box presses onto the tiny gold socket on top of the board. Without it, the board works only from an arm's length away. Easy to forget.

  2. Unplug it and plug it back in

    The chip does not restart by itself after flashing. The USB port then goes quiet: that is normal, not a sign of failure.

  3. Name it from the phone app

    Open the app and tap Connect. The new board is in the list as Untitled. Rename it as soon as you can: two boards with the same name cannot be told apart. It restarts under the new name.

  4. Or name it over WiFi

    The board makes its own network, called Untitled. Join it from a computer and open 192.168.4.1. Not from a phone: the small window a phone opens when you join a network drops it again when it finds no internet.

  5. Nothing else to configure

    The board works out what it is. With radio modules fitted it is a receiver. With none, wired to a flight controller, it is a dongle; fed a receiver's signal on D5, a simulator interface.

  6. After this it updates itself

    Over the air. You should not need a cable again.

The four wires of a dongle are on the dongle page. A receiver's parts and wiring are in Build one. The whole thing is open source: github.com/Mmessiter/LDRC_V2.

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