Omnibus F3 AIO quickstart guide

If you are looking for a flight controller specifically for betaflight, then the omnibus F3 AIO is my favourite. Based on the F303 MCU, along wiht the MPU6000 running on SPI, you can be certain that the performance of this little board will lbe great. However the addition of the OSD (that can be configured via betaflight GUI) and the onboard SD card reading for blackbox logging make this a very impressive flight controller at a great price.

Key Specifications

  • STM32 F303 MCU, Runs Betaflight 3.0 firmware
  • SBUS/PPM input (Pinheaders)
  • 8PWM output (1-4Pinheaders and Sh1.0 Plug, 5-6 as Pinheaders)
  • Only 36x36mm, mount holes 30.5x30.5mm
  • 128Mb Flash(16M Byte)
  • Barometer BMP280
  • IR Pins for race timing transponder
  • SPI Sensor MPU6000
  • SD Card slot
  • 2-4S Lipo Direct power

Omnibus F3 AIO Pinout

The 4in1 ESC connector is designed to work with the typoon littlebee ESC

BetaFlight Download

This board works best with BetaFlight software, which has a focus on flight performance but is still relatively similar to cleanflight. The GUI is a chrome app which can be downloaded here

This guide will not cover the fundamentals of using betaflight as that can be found in the official Betaflight Wiki

To update the firmware within betaflight you simply need to select the target to be OMNIBUS, more details on using DFU mode for flashing the firmware is detailed later in this guide

Omnibus F3 Pin Map

Powering your Flight controller

The Omnibus F3 has a 3 position jumper (next to UART1 pins) that is used to select the power source for the board. You can either power it like most other flight controllers, via a 5V supply. Alternatively you can power it directly via your battery supply (up to 4S Lipo only, usualy 12V or 14V).

Powering via Lipo

Powering via 5V on ESC rail

Using SBUS or PPM Receivers

The first batch of these boards are set to use PPM by default, to use SBUS on the same pin you need to do some soldering to add an SBUS resistor. However as of August 2016, all the new boards can use the same pin for PPM or SBUS which is set as usual via betaflight configuration GUI. However one thing to bear in mind is that when you are using a PPM reciever, the UART3 port cannot be used.

Removing SBUS resistor
If you desperately need to use the UART3 port for something else, and are using a PPM receiver it is still possible to use both, however it will require some soldering to remove the SBUS resistor on R18.

The PPM pin and SERIAL RX pin are shared between UART3 and PPM. Simply plug in the reciever to the one port and pick PPM or Serial RX in the BetaFlight configurator. This also means that when PPM is in use, UART3 cannot be used. However, if you are out of serial ports, using PPM and need one more, you can remove the SBUS resistor as described below and uncomment this line from the BetaFlight source code #define AVOID_UART3_FOR_PWM_PPM. This will enable both PPM and UART3

Flashing firmware and Zadig Drivers

In order to select the Omnibus target within betaflight you might need to select the option to show unstable releases if the omnibus is not shown on the target list for now. And you will also need to flash in DFU mode which is discussed below.

If using windows 10, you will need to flash the board in DFU mode, and to do this you will need to use a program called Zadig which is used to install generic USB drivers so you can talk to the board. You can download Zadig here

Once installed, open Zadig and select the STM32 Bootloader, and WinUSB as the driver to install the correct driver for the board as shown below

Configuring the OSD

One of the best things about the Betaflight GUI, is the ability to configure your OSD board directly within the software. Now you dont need to care about messing around with MW OSD GUI. Also what is even better is that the latest OSD firmware is included with each betaflight update so you dont need to use arduino IDE anymore to flash new OSD firmware.

If you have any questions or comments about the omnibus AIO F3 please let me know and I will be happy to help!

2 Likes

I’ve got a couple of these boards looking forward to putting it in a shendrones corgi frame along with the typhoon pro. I see that it has a port for the 4 in 1 typhoon pro but do you sell a cable to connect the two as the lead that comes with typhoon pro is terminated with servo type connectors.

Can’t recall off hand I’d we sell any right now, but I should be able to get some made as it’s a usefull thing to stock :slight_smile:

If you can I’d definitely purchase a few, I’m not the best when it comes to making crimp connectors.

I’m having a little trouble with the compass. In Betaflight the compass reading is very wrong but it does move with rotation, just that the reset magnetometer is unhighlighted and I can’t then get a compass display in the OSD. I can’t find anything on Google apart from hints that it might be a CLI thing.

Powering the ram pins for vtx
You can use 5v and main lipo.
Even better than that you can choose your own voltage i use a 12v supply from bec.
for my fpv gear just solder 12v to any ram pin from a bec/pdb
Some cams dont like droping below 5v so on punchouts you might get blackouts and using direct lipo can cause more video interferences especially with braking capabilities of modern escs.

Another option for you with this great fc
There is now an f4 version which is the one i have. :wink:

This may only be true for f4 version but though worth sharing.

Leds need to be taken from pwm 5 and be sure to makes sure to double check you get 5v to them.

Getting ports to work correctly.
I noticed uart 1 would dissapear in the ports tab. This is because serial needs to be selected in config tab.

Set uart 1 to serial rx instaead of msp. (May need to go back to config and select serial and come back and check it stuck in ports)

Tip if you use cli dump like me copy the code “feature serial” to the end of you dump this will mean you dont have to change serial back after each dump. Can just dump once with all you profiles rates ect in one hit. :relaxed:

Uart3 3 tx to your smart port pin (may need hack,
Its easy to do especially if you usualky dirext soder the rx )

https://blck.mn/2016/06/smartport-the-frsky-x4rs-and-betaflight/

i recently bought this board but i have problems with connecting the fpv equipment. For instance i dont know what to connect to the RAM pins. Now I only have the video in and out connected as well as ground for video in and out but the video isn’t working. I know for sure i’m not on the wrong frequency nor are the vtx or the camera broken. I do have PAL selected in the betaflight configurator because my cam is pal. Do you have any ideas what i could be doing wrong?

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The ram pins are quite clever they are connected only to each other.
This mean you need to give them power and you get to choose where from.
There are 2 ram pins for vid in and out.
There is another next to vat and 5v so you can link this ram pinto voltage you choose. Either your batt or a 5v supply.

I’ve chosen to use my own 12v bec so I don’t get interference from the main batt and I don’t get cam dropouts from the 5v. So I rum my 12v be to the ram pin now I chase a chat rail 12v ram rail and 5v rail on my board if I need it.

Hope this help

Hi I recently bought a Omnibus F3 Pro FC, but only when it arrived i noticed there are no cables…

Witch ones should i buy for it?

All the cables I use are the ones that come with other components. The signal cables from the ESC’s, the camera and Vtx come with cables and I use a Taranis and the Rx comes with plugs. Are you planning to solder on cable headers and use plugs? That’s the only occasion I can think of you needing extra cables.

Hi!! I got a problem, i got this board and works fine but i broke the usb connection. Any help to use a Ftdi adaptor on this board?
Thanks guys

It will probably be b at if you try to resolder the USB connector, it’s not too hard of you use some solder wick. There is a good video somewhere on how to do this without a hot air gun if you need me to find it let me know

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Hi!! Thanks for your recomendation.
Joshua bardwell help me with this.

You are awesome!! Keep on!
Thanks

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Alex, I just tripped to this and will check it myself when I get back to my Omnibus…I’ve read posts that say I2C on this board is on motor pin 6 and 7 and I’ve seen it say 7 and 8 (perhaps these were on early versions of the board). Your diagram indicates SCL and SDA (I’m assuming this means they’re I2C pins, I’m far from an expert on this stuff?) are the bottom two pins on J3. This means if I’m connecting external magnetometer to the board I use those two pins?

I’ve been flummoxed for a couple of days trying to figure how to get external compass working…always trying the motor pins for the connection. Now that I’ve taken a closer look at the diagram you provide, I’m suspecting that is the error in my ways.

Does this board support IBus?

Yes it does support ibus :slight_smile:

Hola, he cometido el error de cambiar el puerto USB a SERIAL RX y ahora no puedo conectar con mi PC.
Como puedo solucionarlo?

TRANSLATED
Hi, I made the mistake of changing the USB port to SERIAL RX and now I can not connect to my PC.
How can I solve that?

Assuming a Cleanflight type of board reinstall firmware with boot pins/button active and it should come back to as new
Hope it works for you
Cheers
Steve

Suponiendo que un tipo Cleanflight de placa reinstale el firmware con los pines de arranque / botĂłn activo y deberĂ­a volver a como nuevo
Espero que funcione para ti
Aclamaciones
Steve

Perfecto, muchas gracias!