itch.io

Thanks for the links. I'm following the other topics, too, so I already stumbled across them. Antimicro is not part of the standard repository, so I tried to avoid it for my first try. The joystick package seems to provide everything relevant expect an user interface ;)

Thanks for the hint towards the calibration file, I'll take a look at it as soon as I find some time. I understand that a checkbox is maybe confusing people more than it helps. However, I would be happy to solve the calibration issue. What about a command-line parameter to turn internal calibration off?

As a software developer I'm very curious to take a look into the code and figure out how it works and what's going wrong. Is there any option to get access to the source code? Are you interested in getting help from other developers?

All the best,
Stefan

Interesting to hear how it's supposed to be and how it actually works for people.

Thanks MiSKLaCH for sharing your experience!

• Install (if not present yet) the "joystick" package. It provides commands like "jscal", "jstest", etc.
• Connect radio (in my case: start Taranis and then connect the USB port on the back to you computer)
• Calibrate radio within Ubuntu by running "jscal -c /path/to/joystick" (in my case the Taranis was mounted as /dev/input/js0 device, so I used: "jscal -c /dev/input/js0")
  Follow the instructions on the screen. After a precision test, you will need to move all your analog joysticks to the min/center/max positions accordingly one after the other.
• Once the calibration is done, you can check it using "jstest /path/to/joystick". This will output all actual joystick values that are transmitted to the operating system. For my Taranis I have 8 analog axis and 24 buttons. 4 of the analog axis correspond to my joysticks (channels 1 to 4) and I can verify that all analog values range from roughly -32000 to +32000 (the range of a signed short value) when I move my sticks. Furthermore I can verify that there is no dead zone around the center of my joysticks.
  In my case running "jscal -c /dev/input/js0" resulted in the calibration I was looking for.
• If you are fine with the calibration in your operating system, get the joystick calibration via "jscal -p /path/to/joystick". You should get a line similar to:
  "jscal -s 8,1,0,0,0,4227201,4227201,1,0,0,0,4227201,4227201,1,0,0,0,4227201,4227201,1,0,0,0,4227201,4227201,1,0,0,0,-2147483648,-2147483648,1,0,0,0,-2147483648,-2147483648,1,0,0,0,-2147483648,-2147483648,1,0,0,0,-2147483648,-2147483648 /dev/input/js0"
  This line is used to restore your specific joystick calibration after you disconnected and connected it again.
• Create a script which restores your joystick-calibration and afterwards runs FPVFreerider
• If you centered all your joysticks before and during startup of FPVFreerider everything should be fine. However, my throttle stick is usually not centered during startup and thus I need to run the calibration in FPVFreerider every time. I can not confirm that it reuses the settings of the previous run, since I get different results when starting with different initial stick positions, while jstest returns always the same value range regardless of my initial stick positions.

Some helping references I used:

• OpenTX GitHub-Wiki: https://github.com/opentx/opentx/wiki/OpenTX-USB-J...
• A blog entry about jscal: https://blog.gimx.fr/joystick-calibration-in-gnuli...

At my current point of view, I would simply like to turn off the internal calibration in FPVFreerider and see how it works. However, this is probably not the best solution for most other people, resprectively needs some further testing and evaluation before releasing. I'm currently discussing with the author on how to evaluate this option. Furthermore, I'll take a closer look at the configuration file stored by FPVFreerider and see if I can figure out something. Maybe I'll find some time over the weekend for further analysis.

Until then, all the best,
Stefan

Thanks for your reply! Great to see a friendly and active community behind this simulator!

I'm currently taking a second look at the Taranis joystick integration and it seems like I have 8 analog channels and 24 buttons available. Since I can configure 32 channels in the mixer within the Taranis, it seems like the channels of my model are mapped to joystick buttons on the computer. Really great design choice by the opentx developers in my opinion! This way I can freely configure any switch on my Taranis to trigger what ever virtual button I like. I'm currently investigating how to map the buttons to keys and finally to actions in FPVFreerider.

I have another question that came up during the last couple of days regarding the joystick calibration within FPVFreerider. I extracted my specific joystick settings after I calibrated it in my operating system. After I plug in my Taranis, I run a script that restores that specific settings as explained in the opentx wiki entry I linked in the previous post. Now, when I then start FPVFreerider and skip the calibration step to see the controller actions, all joysticks are fine out of the box as long as they are in their center position during startup of FPVFreerider. However, I usually have the throttle stick at bottom position when I start the simulator and thus it interprets this position as center position. So I have two choices to go: either center the throttle stick before starting FPVFreerider, or calibrate my controller every time I run FPVFreerider. It's not a big issue, however, I wondered if turning off the internal calibration in FPVFreerider would result in a just fine setup, which doesn't need manual interaction every time I run it. Do you think adding a checkbox to allow the user to turn on/off the internal controller calibration in FPVFreerider would be an option?

All the best,
Stefan

Hey again,

it only took another night of sleep and some further research to solve my issue... so everything is working fine now. Sorry for apparently not doing enough research before asking questions.

Everybody having the same issues with their Taranis connected via USB to their Linux machine may want to take a look at the openTX wiki on GitHub: https://github.com/opentx/opentx/wiki/OpenTX-USB-J...

According to this wiki page, the joystick driver by default adds some dead zone to the sticks around their center position. In my case, running "jscal -c /dev/input/js0" and recalibrating the Taranis within Linux did the trick and removed the dead zones.

All the best,
Stefan

PS: Keep up the great work! Also big thanks for supporting Linux.

Hey there,

I'm running FPVFreerider Recharged on a Ubuntu 16.04 Laptop in combination with a Taranis X9D Plus, connected via USB. The simulator and the Taranis worked fine out of the box, however I realized that there is a dead zone of +/-12% around the center of both joysticks on my Taranis.

I use "linear" control in the custom settings and tried various Expo settings on the Taranis with no difference. The "Dead zone" setting of the simulator itself is turned off.

Anybody experienced something similar, or has an idea what may be wrong?

All the best and a happy new year,
Stefan