Setup Steps
Basic Quad Setup
A few point I always check on a new setup or when troubleshooting. Taking care of the points below will ensure your basic settings and checks are done before moving on to more in-depth troubleshooting if you have issues with the drone’s tracking.
Accelerometer Calibration
If your quad is drifting and difficult to center in straight and level flight, the problem may be the accelerometer. This is your first point of call for troubleshooting this type of problem.
Calibration Process
- Connect the drone to Betaflight and place it on a level surface.
- On the Betaflight Setup tab just click on Calibrate Accelerometer
Camera Alignment
If your drone feels to be sliding off to one side and not tracking at your aim point, the most likely cause is your camera alignment. This is important for the FPV cam to enable you to fly well and also importnat for the 4K action cam.
To test your camera alignment, you will need to follow the proceedure below for the FPV cam and then use a similar proceedure for the 4K cam.
Connect to Betaflight and set the Disarmed element in the middle of the screen at the bottom. This will be used for alignment. Set it so the 4 letters DISA are on the left of the centreline and RMED on the right side
Place the drone (parallel to) and against a wall and measure the distance from the wall to the centre of the FPV camera.
Put some BluTack on the end of a pen and about 2 meters away, measure the same distance from the wall and stand the pen up. Now the FPV camera and pen should both be the same distance from the wall.
Now look through the FPV goggles. Is the pen between the A and R in the word “Disarmed”? In the example above the pen is off to the left indicating that the camera is turned slightly to the right.
Adjust the FPV camera and repeat the process until the camera is aligned with the pen exactly lined up with the middle of the screen.
ESC Settings
Optional but highly recommended. I always upgrade my ESC firmware to 32 bit if it comes with BLHeliS installed. A good option is to use Bluejay.
Upgrading your EScs to 32bit firmware will allow you to enable bidirectional dShot in Betaflight. You’ll get increased effeciency and be able to apply a custom preset tune for a cinematic drone.
- Plug a battery in and connect to your computer.
- Go to esc-configurator.com and upgrade to Bluejay
- Choose a PWM frequency of 48
- Then in Betaflight enable bidirectional DShot
Check Frame Resonance
It’s good to do a few basic checks to ensure that there is no adverse frame resonance. For this step we don’t need to go overboard, just some basic checks of the build quality.
First, clear your blackbox logs and then do a quick test flight. Pull a log from the quad and open it up in Blackbox Explorer to check for any frame resonance.
Your filters will do a lot to remove most noise so the frame doesn’t need to be perfectly quiet. Check the Debug Gyro Scaled plots for any resonances with peaks going into the red area at the top. If you have any issues with rsonance there are a few simple things you can check without getting into detailed troubleshooting.
- Check all motor screws are tight
- Props - not damaged or bent and screws tight
- Stack - Dampeners not compressed too much
- Stack - Nothing touching and stack not touching the frame at any point
- No appendages hanging loose to wobble around