Running BLHeil32 suite on Mac

Document Conventions

• where you see <enter> this means to press the enter key.
• <cmd> means to press the command or "flower" key,
• <space> means to press the space key
• any other text inside angle brackets <> refers to a value captured earlier in the document

Install and Configure Wine

• open your browser and browse to http://winebottler.kronenberg.org/
• click on "wine bottler 1.8.x stable" download box.
  • A pop-up will come up telling you they will show an add. click "download"
  • This will take you to an add, maybe even asking to install flash. Just pause here. In the top right corner of the page, there will be a countdown, for about 5 seconds or so. Then there will be a "skip ad" button - click this.
  • "WineBottlerCombo_1.8.x.dmg" will download
  • once downloaded, open the .dmg file by double clicking on it and install wine.app and winebottler.app by draging them to the application folder in the dmg folder
  • open a terminal
  • type cd <enter>
  • type /Applications/Wine.app/Contents/Resources/bin/winecfg <enter>
  • Wait for wine dialog box, there will be bunch of text scrolling by on the terminal. this is ok.
  • When the dialog comes up just click "ok" to close

Connect the serial ports you need to Wine

• open betaflight/butterflight/cleanflight configurator with your quad plugged in but not connected. Copy the names of the connection(s) you use
  • these will be something like /dev/tty.usbmodemXXX, /dev/cu.usbmodemXXX, /dev/tty.SLAB_USBtoUart.. etc
• for each /dev/ entry here that you use for a quad, type in the console

ln -s /dev/tty.usbmodemXXX ~/.wine/dosdevices/comX <enter>

starting with "com1" for the first one, and incrementing by 1 (com2, com3, etc) for each additonal entry

Get blheli suite and put it somewhere we can use it

• download the latest blheli32_suite zip file from https://www.mediafire.com/folder/dx6kfaasyo24l/BLHeliSuite
• open download folder in finder
• double click on the downloaded file to extract. save the name of the folder - this is the "applicaiton directory"
• open a terminal, and type

  mv ~/Downloads/<name noted above for folder> ~/ <enter>
  

• Optional: you may delete the downloaded zip file now
• retrieve your home directory by typing

  cd && pwd <enter>
  

• save the output (will look like /Users/your_login_name) for later - this is your "home directory"

Create a Mac Application

• Run the automator app by either
  • <cmd><space> to bring up spotlight and type Automator
  • or open launchpad and find the Automator app
  • When the automator app starts, you get a file select dialog.. select "new document" on the bottom left of the selector
  • In the next dialog pick "Application"
  • Now enter script in the search box in the top left of the automator application
  • double click on run shell script
  • This will add a "run shell script" window to the right
  • In the text box, enter

    /Applications/Wine.app/Contents/Resources/bin/wine <home-directory>/<application-directory>/BLHeliSuite32.exe
    

    replace with the path we captured at the beginning as home directory, and replace with the name we captured above as application directory. The end result should look like

/Applications/Wine.app/Contents/Resources/bin/wine /Users/joeuser/BLHeliSuite32_32404/BLHeliSuite32.exe

• click the "run" button (right pointing triangle top right)
  • it will take a few seconds, but blhelisuite32 should run
  • if you instead get a ding or an error message, something is wrong. double check the command entered in the box.
• plug your quad into the usb, plug in a battery, select the com port to the left that matches the path you usually use (probably com1 or com2)
• click "connect" - four boxes shoudl appear next to connect.
  • if not, select another comp port and try again.
• once connected, hit read setup - a dialog listing your escs should come up.
  • if you get a list of escs but no details, it is possible you did not power the quad, or there is something wrong with the firmware on them.
• click ok to get out of dialogs, then close button -> exit
  • this tests all good.
• Go back to automator application, then menu bar file -> export
• Select desktop and give it a name (blheli32.app is good)
• app should appear on your desktop. try double clicking it.. be patient for a few seconds
• when it runs, connect as above and from here it works just like working on windows, without the panes.

Thanks

Thanks to Ben Radler - most of this information came from his video on You Tube.

How to use BLHeliSuite on Mac OS X