Launch mode activated, ready to launch? Okay, now I've got launch mode activated
so when I arm the quad and then I push the pitch stick all the way forward the
quad should pitch forward to its maximum angle which I've preset in Betaflight,
but watch what happens without me touching the pitch stick and just arming the quad.
So what's up with launch control, right?!? Good day! What you just saw is not how launch control
was supposed to work. My quad should not have pitched forward uncommanded as soon as I armed it.
I hadn't used launch control in a while and I first thought since I updated my Betaflight
version since the last time I used it that maybe there was a change to how launch control worked.
So, I went through a bunch of the Betaflight version release notes and I didn't find any
changes to launch control. My next step was to ask if any changes were made to launch control
that didn't make the release notes. The Betaflight dev assured me no changes had
been made and suggested I look at my channel outputs as a possible solution. This hadn't
occurred to me since I've always just calibrated my sticks and channels once and then forgot about
them. That was my mistake! Today, I'm going to show you how NOT to make the same mistake I did.
I'm going to demonstrate for you how to calibrate your control channel endpoints and center values
using both Betaflight and OpenTX and how to use extended limits (if necessary) to get the proper
calibration. Sound good? Then make sure to hit that "thumbs up" button below and subscribe to
your TMac FPV channel - your home for YOUR Journey to Better FPV fun, flights, and racing stuff!
Of course, the first thing we want to do before we even get into calibrating our channel endpoints
is to ensure our gimbals are calibrated as shown at time mark 16:43 of this video
RadioMaster TX16S Setup and Customization. Now, for this video I'll be using my RadioMasterTX16S
however everything I do is basically the same for any transmitter running OpenTX firmware.
Next it's probably a good idea to make sure each of these four trim tabs are centered initially
to make sure that they don't inadvertently affect your channel center and end points calibrations.
There are a few ways to check to see if they're centered. First of all if you have this trims
option toggled on in your telemetry page you'll visually see whether or not they're centered by
looking at the red dot along these horizontal and vertical bars. Secondly, if they're not centered
and you want to center them you could be notified by an audible alarm when they do become centered.
"Trim center." Lastly, I've created a custom soundtrack which plays as a reminder and
notifies me once that my trims are not centered – "Check trims for centering." If you're interested
in how to do that I've got screenshots of the simple logical switches and special functions
I've created for that purpose displayed here on the screen and you can also check out my
custom sounds video through a link in the video description below. Then with your transmitter on,
connect your quadcopter to Betaflight and with your props off power your quad with
a flight battery if needed for your receiver to be active. Go to the Receiver tab in Betaflight.
These first four channels over here shown in your Receivers tab are your control
channels. I have my control channels set up as roll, pitch, throttle, and yaw or AETR
for aileron, elevator, throttle, and rudder. So when you move your transmitter sticks
you should see the corresponding channel bar move for that particular stick movement.
For each of these channels when the stick is in its center position you want this number
here to be at 1500 not 1535. When it's at its minimum position you want this number to be at
1000 and when the stick is at its maximum position you want this number to be at 2 000.
After you've calibrated your transmitter sticks, the first thing you want to do is center them
and get your ppm center value displayed here for each channel at 1500.
To do that we need to go to our channel outputs page
and, for each channel that's not displaying 1500 when the sticks are at their center position,
we scroll down to that channel (and in this case I'll do my pitch channel which is channel 2).
Press enter to edit that channel and scroll over to this last column of numbers which is
your ppm center column as indicated here in the upper right on the outputs page of the TX16S.
To edit this number we press enter and then we use our scroll bar to scroll left to reduce this
number or scroll right to increase it as necessary while we're watching the value displayed on the
channel bar here in your Betaflight receiver tab. We want to get this value down to 1500 when the
stick is at its center position. Sso we're going to scroll left while we're watching that bar
and get that value down to 1500.
Once we're there we select enter again and then return on our transmitter
and we do the same thing for each channel that isn't displaying a center value of 1500
in Betaflight. So let's go ahead and do that for our yaw (that would be channel 4). Select enter,
scroll over to ppm center, and this time we want to increase the number to 1500. Right there
and we press enter again, return, and now our roll, pitch, and yaw center values are at 1500.
When we center the throttle stick it's at 1500 also. So we're good to go. There!
Now that our center values have been calculated let's take a look at our endpoints.
We want our minimums to be at a thousand and our maximums to be at two thousand.
There are a couple ways of going about doing this and I'm going to show you the easiest way that
works for me without using the CLI. This method is through the channel outputs page very similar
to what we did with our ppm center values. To determine our minimum value for each of our
control channels we hold our transmitter stick at its minimum position for that channel and observe
what value we have in the Betaflight Receiver Tab for that channel. If it's not at a thousand,
such as I have here with the pitch channel, we simply scroll over to the second column of numbers
(which is associated with our minimum value as indicated in the upper right hand corner
of the outputs page of our RadioMasterTX16S) then we adjust this value by clicking enter
and scrolling left to reduce it or to the right to increase it. In this case, since our value on our
Betaflight Receivers Tab is 1030, when the stick is in the minimum position we want to decrease
it to 1000. So, I'm going to scroll left and we watch the number on the Betaflight Receiver Tab
for the pitch channel reduce until it gets to 1000. There are a few clicks of the scroll bar
that allow it to have a value of one thousand. There's one click, two, three. So I've got three
clicks that allow the value to be at a thousand in the Betaflight Receiver tab and I'll just use the
first one since we're dealing with a minimum here. Once it's at a thousand we click enter
and now when we move our stick to its minimum position we're at a thousand.
We do that for each of our control channels. Here we see our roll is at 988 in the Betaflight
Receivers tab. So let's go ahead and change that. Roll is our aileron channel which is channel one.
We scroll over here to the second column of numbers which is depicted by min in the
upper right hand corner of our outputs page and we want to increase that to 1000. So,
click enter and we want to scroll it right until we get to 1000. That should do it!
Click enter. Now when we move the stick to its minimum position for roll we're at a thousand.
Similarly, to get our maximum values at 2000, we hold our transmitter stick at its maximum
position for that channel and observe what value we have in the Betafight Receiver Tab
for the channel. In this case our pitch maximum value is 2011. We want to reduce that to 2000.
So, this time we're going to scroll over to the third column of numbers (and I'm
doing our pitch channel here) and that will be our maximum value as depicted by the word max
in our Outputs Page of our RadioMasterTX16S. So, when our pitch stick is moved to its max position
our value in the Betaflight Receiver Tab is 2011. We want that to be 2000. So that means I need to
reduce this number 100 by using the scroll bar to the left. So let's go ahead and press enter here.
Put our stick at its maximum position and we want to reduce that to 2000. It appears that we can
go from 1999 to 2001. Since this is a max value I'm gonna go with 2001 here and press enter. So,
when our stick is at its maximum position now we're at 2001 which is pretty darn close to 2000.
That should work for us! What about roll? Roll is at 1999. What we can do is go to our
roll channel (which is channel 1 for aileron), press enter, scroll over here to the max column,
and with our roll stick maxed out to the right let's just see if we can get to two thousand.
Two thousand one. That's good. We'll go with that. Roll is at 2001. What about yaw?
Yaw min is at 1024. We want that to be at 1000. Yaw is channel 4 for rudder. So we want to
go to our second column for minimum, press enter, hold our stick over to the minimum value
and decrease that to 1000. Right there. Press enter, move our stick to the minimum position.
It's now at 1000. What about maximum? It's at 2008. Let's go ahead and move that over and we
want to decrease that number until our maximum yaw value is at 2000. We'll go with 2001 in this case.
There can be situations however when this number over here . . . you need to increase this past
100 in order to get a maximum value of 2000 on your Betaflight Receiver Tab channel
and it won't go past 100. So, what do we do then? Well, that's easy! We just return out of here
to our Model Setup Page and scroll down to Extended Limits. In this Extended Limits option
you just want to press enter and toggle that on. Press return. Now it's toggled on which means
we can go back to our channel Outputs Page and now we can change these numbers past 100 if we want to
on either side
to get these values in your Betaflight Receiver Tab at a thousand and two thousand, if necessary,
by going past minus one hundred or plus one hundred in those two columns. So,
after we do all that we now have our mid-stick values at fifteen hundred,
our minimums at one thousand, and our maximum's at two thousand.
If you see your numbers twitching or flickering around the center value on your channels,
no worries. Just take note of by how much they're changing. Let's say that they're changing between
1498 and 1500, that would be changing by two. We'll add one or two to that. Let's just add
one to say three. Then you put that number over here in RC deadband. So we'll put the value three
here. Or, if it happens to be on your yaw channel, put it over here under Yaw deadband. We'll just do
both for now. Remember to click "Save" down here in the lower right hand corner of your screen
and it shows "Saved" up here. That's how you calibrate your channel endpoints, ppm center,
and use extended limits with both Betaflight and OpenTX. Now that you've got your gimbals
and channel endpoints and centers calibrated properly, you shouldn't experience any unexpected,
uncommanded movements! Thanks for your time. I'll see you next video. Clear skies friend!