Quanum Illuminati 32

After a number of hours trying to get the Illuminati 32 Flight controller working on a tricopter (I couldn't figure out how to connect and configure the servo), I eventually found out that the controller resources (pins) had to be configured manually via the cleanflight CLI.

There is a good file on the HobbyKing Illuminati 32 Files tab with a setup for a tricopter.

 

I subsequently tried to figure out the resource identifiers for each of the connectors.  I have listed below what I think they are but as I'm no expert in either the Illuminati 32 or Naze 32 you should use the following information with extreme caution.  If you manage to brick your controller, crash your 'copter, cause injury or it just doesn't work that that's your problem.

 

Illuminati 32 Resource connections

Resource ID Connection
A08 M1
A11 M2
B06 M3
B07 M4
B08 M5
B90 M6
B03 or B04 ? LED
A04 or A05 ? Power ADC
   
A00 CH1
A01 CH2
A02 CH3
A03 CH4
A06 CH5
A07 CH6
B00 CH7
B01 CH8
   
SDA B11
SCL B10

 

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Yesss!!!  Managed to unbrick the Illuminati 32.

Spoiler alert! - The hardest bit was finding the boot pins.

After trying to flash a Skyline 32 with Cleanflight 2.4.0, bricking it and (as the boot pins are obvious on it) re-flashing it successfully with Cleanflight 2.3.2, I thoutht I would have another go with the Illuminati.

When I originally bricked it I had a look for boot pins and couldn't find them.  I consulted Google and couldn't find any reference to them.  I therefore assumed that, for some weird and unknown reason, the manufacturers hadn't made provision for them.

Today I decided I would have another look.  Again I removed the board from the hard case and had a look over it.  There were 2 pads on the underside that were unlabeled.  I wondered if these could be the pins.  I thought, well, I've nothing to loose, here goes... No luck: "No response from bootloader".

I had a closer look (under my magnifying lamp) and eventually found them beside the USB connector, The word "boot" is actually written beside them but it is partially obscured by a hole.

Boot pin location picture goes here 
Boot pin location closeup goes here

I selcted NAZE -> Cleanflight 2.3.2 from the Flash firmware dropdowns. Selected No reboot sequence, Full chip erase, and Flash on connect. Bridged the pins with a pair of tweezers and connected the USB... Hey presto! it worked.  Status line showed "Flashing".  After the flash had completed successfully I rebooted the board, clicked connect and immediately got the status screen. I clicked on the sensors tab and moved the board around. Here is the screenshot:

Cleanflight screen showing working flight controller goes here
 
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I eventually got the Illuminati32 to flash the firmware but I managed to brick it in the process.

When trying to flash the firmware of the Illuminati32 using Cleanflight I kept getting STM32 timeouts.  I experimented with various manual baud rates etc. but It evenually came down to a timing problem.

When the Illuminati32 first boots up you get a green flashing LED. After a while the red LED comes on and the green LED is steady for a few seconds.  The green LED then gets brighter and goes out, leaving just the red LED lit.

I was waiting until the green light went out before starting the flash process and constantly getting the STM32 timeout.  I tried it once while the green let was in the steady lit state and Cleanflight reported that the firmware was flashing OK and then showed "Successful". At this point both the LEDs went out on the Illuminati and it hasn't worked since!

If I boot the board in Normal mode (Switches 1 & 2 on all others off) I get the blue flashing light but if I boot in FC Config mode (Switches 5 & 6 on, all others off) I get nothing.

Watch this space...

 

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I bought an Illuminati 32 flight controller from Hobby King however I had quite a few problems getting it working with Cleanflight.

I am running Cleanflight 2.4.0 as a Chrome Extension on Linux Mint 1.9 Cinnamon.

Every time I tried to connect the flight controller I got an error message saying to either upgrade the firmware or use an older version of CleanFlight.

When i tried to flash the firmware I encountered many problems including STM32 timeout errors.  I still haven't got this resolved but I'll cover that in another article.

The current version of the firmware on the board is 1.8.1.  So far I've only been able to get the CleanFlight GUI working with it by using version 1.0 of CleanFlight.

To add Version 1.0 of CleanFlight to Chrome you need to follow the following steps (note: the screenshots were taken in Windows but the procedure is the same):

  • Download the CleanFlight 1.0.0 zip file from GitHub;
  • Extract the zip archive to a directory on your computer (The directory where you want it to live rather than your desktop or a temporary directory is best);
  • Open Chrome;
  • Click on the 3 dots in the top right corner:
  • Chrome menu
  • Click on settings;
  • Chrome settings
  • Click on the 3 lines in the top left;
  • Chrome settings menu
  • Click on Extensions;
  • Chrome extensions
  • Ensure Developer mode is turned on (Top right corner);
  • Chrome developer mode
  • Click Load unpacked (Top left corner);
  • Chrome load unpacked
  • Browse to the directory that you extracted CleanFlight to and click Select Folder;
  • Chrome select folder
  • You can now close the Extensions and Settings tabs;
  • To access Cleanflight:
    • click on Apps (Top left corner);
    • Chrome apps
    • Click on the CleanFlight icon;
    • CleanFlight icon
    • If you have more that one CleanFlight installation the icons appear in the order they were added to Chrome but you can check the version number within the app itself.
    • CleanFlight version
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