So you want to update your IRC Vortex? Good luck with that.
I just inherited one that came with the launch firmware; saw a lot of good stuff added on later on so I thought I’d update it real quick; what’s the big deal right?
Oh well if I’m writing this you already know this wasn’t that easy.
But for my own record and yours I’ll spare you the details of the looong list of what didn’t work and go straight to what did.
Basically the kicker is that:
- The hardware architectures constitutes of a F3 MCU for flight control along with another coprocessor for other features and OSD
- It came with Betaflight 3.0.1 with no public target; firmware is distributed by IRC under a .hex file
- There is also a .fw file for the OSD that can only be conveniently flashed with the Vortex Configurator App (more on it shortly)
- The last update v1.0.0.52 was published end of 2017
- Speaking of IRC they got acqured by Orqa in 2022 and the website appears mostly unmaintained since around then so I will be archiving some of that stuff just in case
- And best of all, the Vortex Configurator app is a Chrome App, for which Chrome has entirely stopped support in jan 2025.
The app is visible on the Chrome store but you can’t download it, however they do provide the .crx app file on the IRC website but you can’t install it, however you can extract the source and install unpacked but you still can’t run it.
Now here is a big advice for you before you do anything;
Do not update anything unless you can make the Vortex Configurator App running.
I thought I could update betaflight alone and run on the release OSD fw but nop I could arm it but it didn’t recognize stick commands and stayed stuck on the homescreen.
And finally to the meat of it:
How to run old Chrome Apps in 2026 (and hopefully thereafter)
- Get the app .crx file from the downloads section of the product page
- Use a crx extractor tool to unpack it. That one worked for me. Extract .zip to a folder.
- Get the last version of Chrome for Testing to support Chrome Apps (v113). Copy the appropriate download url frome this list. Here’s the win64 for you.
- Run the app, go to extensions, enable dev mode, then load unpacked the extracted .crx you prepared earlier.
- Now if you type chrome://apps in the address bar you should see the Vortex App ready to run; just click Open Anyway when prompted and you should be ready to go!
All that’s left to do is to plug in, update betaflight and osd from the firmware supplied on the product page and you should have a working Vortex in all it’s vintage glory 😎
