Betaflight MAVLink Telemetry

This page describes how to wire a Betaflight flight controller board and a USB-to-TTL Serial Converter (USART) to get MAVLink Telemetry data out of Betaflight to your PC and decode it.

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Hardware:

• Board: STM32F411 (STM32F411VE MCU)
• Wi-Fi Module: ESP-01 (1MB) (ESP8266)
• Adapter USB-to-TTL for UART: RS232 (CP2102)

Setup

Betaflight (STM32F411DISCOVERY target):

• Download Betaflight 4.0.0 STM32F411DISCOVERY [DEV] (built from betaflight/betaflight@a6fabe1)
• Download Betaflight Configurator
• Flash downloaded target (instructions here)

Betaflight Telemetry:

• Connect to Configurator via USER USB port
• Go to "Configuration" (tab) -> "Other Features" (box) and enable "TELEMETRY"
• "Save and Reboot"
• Go to "Ports" (tab) and for "UART6" select "MAVLink" in "Telemetry Output" (dropdown) and set it to "115200"
• "Save and Reboot"

USB-to-TTL Module Connection:

• Connect the following pins (module -> board)
  • RXD -> PC6 (USART6 TX)
  • TXD -> PC7 (USART6 RX)
  • GND -> GND
• Connect USB-to-TTL to a USB port on PC
• Verify telemetry is getting sent with a serial reader (picocom, minicom, screen, RealTerm, ...)
  • Make sure serial reader baud rate is set to 115200!
  • Data is sent in MAVLink protocol (garbled without a decoder)

MAVLink Decoder (Python 3):

• Download pymavlink (eg. via pip)
• Download mavlink_listener
• Run pythonk mavlink_listener.py --device=<port> --baudrate=115200
  • Replace <port> with connected TTY/COM port (eg. Linux: /dev/ttyUSB0, Windows: COM0)