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Save companion number

Good day! Last video, I introduced you to the best value transmitter on the market today - the RadioMaster TX16S. If you missed that video, check it out through a link in the video description below. In that video I copied my models over from my Jumper T16 to my Radiomaster TX16S along with my custom images and custom sound files. Today I want to back up just a little bit. Literally! I want to backup what's currently on my RadioMaster TX16S just in case I need it sometime in the future, like if I mess something up when i'm updating my OpenTX firmware for some reason, such as, when a new version has support for touch screen capability. So today I'm going to demonstrate how you can backup the three main things on your OpenTX transmitter like the RadioMaster TX16S, Jumper T16, T18 Lite, or even a FrSky transmitter. This is something you'll want to do on at least a monthly basis, if not every time you make significant changes to your models and firmware. Think of it as Step #1 before you make those changes, and schedule it once a month on your "Firmware Friday" updates. A side benefit you're going to get from doing these three simple steps is you're going to get comfortable using OpenTX Companion. Sound good? Then make sure to give this video a "thumbs up" below, share it with your buddies and subscribe to your TMac FPV channel - your home for your Journey to Better FPV fun, flights, and racing stuff! Let's say you just got a new transmitter running the Opentx operating system firmware and/or you just want to update the firmware on your existing transmitter to its newest version for some of its additional features. So what you're going to want to do is back everything up. It's also a good idea to do this after you've just made some significant changes to your existing models within the transmitter and don't want to lose them. You can do this through the use of OpenTX Companion. Companion is your transmitter support software that allows you to configure the OpenTX firmware on your transmitter similar to how the Betaflight Configurator allows you to configure the Betaflight flight controller firmware on your quadcopter. So, if you haven't done so already, you'll need to download and install the correct version of OpenTX Companion for the firmware on your transmitter. Once again, similar to the Betaflight Configurator, a new version of OpenTX Companion normally comes out with each version of OpenTX firmware. You want to get the version of OpenTX Companion that's at least as new as the version of your OpenTX firmware. So, for example, if I'm running OpenTX firmware version 2.3.7 or 2.3.9, I can go to the download page for OpenTX 2.3.9 and get the OpenTX Companion Windows installer, download and install it to your computer, then open it up and run it. All right, before we start using our OpenTX Companion, the first of three things that we want to back up is our SD card contents on our transmitter. We don't need OpenTX Companion to do that. So, the first thing we need to do is to power on the transmitter by pushing in these two trim tabs, pressing the power button, and then connect it to the computer through the USB cable which I've got connected to a USB hub so I'm just going to press the button. That brings up this window with the SD card contents on it in all of these folders. These are all the folders and files that we want to copy over from our SD card on our transmitter (which is in the USB drive) over to a folder on our hard drive. Obviously, I've got two windows opened up here. The one on the left is our SD card contents on our transmitter. The one on the right is my hard drive where I've created the folder for OpenTX, TX16S, SD Card. So we take all of these folders and files, right click, copy and we paste them to that folder on my hard drive. Once these are copied over to a folder on my hard drive, we then have a backup from which we can revert to should any or all of these folders and files on the SD card inside our transmitter get corrupted or deleted for some reason. All right, now we've got an exact duplicate of our SD card contents (which are on the SD card in the transmitter) over here in a folder on my hard drive. So if something happens to these on the transmitter, all we need to do is copy and paste these back over to the SD card just by connecting the transmitter to the computer the way we did earlier, copy and paste these files back over to the SD card. In fact, what we could do is we could use a new SD card formatted in Fat32, stick that in our transmitter, and copy these files over to the new SD card. All right, we've accomplished our first step. For our second backup, backing up the OpenTX radio firmware (which is currently in use by our transmitter), we'll want to use our OpenTX Companion. So we still have this open from previously and we power up our transmitter in what's called bootloader mode just like we did before by pressing these two trim tabs in and the power button. Then we connect it to the computer through the USB cable just like we did before. It shows that USB is connected. It brings up these two windows which it normally does. This first window it brought up you don't want to mess with. Close it out. The second window is the one we saw previously with our SD card contents and folders over here under the USB drive. We don't need to work on these right now, we just close these out. Now we're just left with the OpenTX Companion canvas. The first thing we want to do is make sure that we have our correct radio profile loaded. In my case, the RadioMaster TX16S. If this is your first time using Companion with your transmitter, you want to create a new radio profile. To do that, you just go to settings, radio profiles, add radio profile. Here you name your transmitter whatever you'd like. I call my TX16S something unique like "Rradiomaster TX16S." You'll then want to select your radio type from the drop down menu and what language you'd like to use. If you're not going to be flying helicopters, I would click on "noheli." That just gets rid of one of the setup screens specific to helicopters. I'd recommend clicking on lua so you can use lua scripts later on. You won't need to do anything else with these blank boxes here at this point. You can do that later on. They're just file paths to the folders where you'll be keeping your backup files. You will need to set your default stick mode and your default channel order. If you want your throttle and yaw on the left stick, select mode 2. Your channel order here is important. It establishes what order your control channels will be in by default when you create new models in your transmitter. I would highly recommend using the same channel order for all your models - keep it consistent! I use AETR for mine. Also, if you're using a transmitter with a multi-protocol module like the TX16S, T16, or t18, to ensure you don't have any channel mapping issues you want to use the same channel order for the version of firmware you use to update your multi-protocol module with - which is different than OpenTX firmware. If you're not sure what I just said or somewhat confused about these two different firmware, no worries! Check out this video on "Firmware Clarified." For now, Ijust recommend using AETR and, if you update your multi-protocol module firmware, use the AETR version of the multi-module firmware. Everything else on the "Application Settings" and the "Simulator Settings" tabs you can leave as default now and just click "ok." Then make sure you're using the radio profile you just created. I'll be using my RadioMaster TX16S. Now that we're using the correct radio profile, we just click on this horizontal arrow icon over here that says "Read firmware from radio." It's going to open up a window that asks you where you want to save it. Just create a folder on your hard drive and select that folder. Now you have a backup of the radio firmware currently in use by your transmitter located on your hard drive. So if you need to reinstall it, just click this icon over here with a vertical arrow that says "Write firmware to radio" and then select the file from the folder you saved it to. It's that simple! We're done with our backup number #2! Now our third and final backup is for our Models and Settings. With our transmitter still connected to the computer, we continue with Companion by clicking on this icon with the horizontal arrow at the top that says "Read model and settings from radio." It's going to open up this window with all of your models from your transmitter. Make sure that this window is active and simply click file, save as, and then select the folder on your hard drive that you want to save it to. I'm going to label this "models and settings tx16s 30 july . . ." and give it the date. Click "save." Just like our previous step, we now have a backup of our models and settings on our hard drive which if we need to reinstall to our transmitter we go into our OpenTX Companion, select file open, grab the file models and settings that we just saved to our hard drive, open it up, and then we go over here to the icon with a vertical arrow that says "write models and settings to the radio" It will write the models (and settings) from the window of the file that we just opened up from our hard drive to our radio. By doing these 3 quick and easy backups of your SD card contents, your radio firmware, and your models and settings on a consistent and periodic basis, should something happen to any of these on your transmitter for whatever reason, rest assured you'll be able to recover it and get your transmitter back in flying order! That's how you back up your OpenTX transmitter SD card content, models and settings, and your radio firmware. By doing just these 3 simple steps, it should give you peace of mind knowing that no matter what happens you've got your back covered! Let me know in the comments below if you found this useful and what you'd like to see next on your TMac FPV channel. Until then, make sure to check these out next! Thanks for your time. I'll see you next video. Clear skies friend!