Nice job CK, I have always added GPS to my quads, not specifically to use gps rescue mode but for finding my quad when it goes down. Having the GPS co-ordinates either in the OSD, or indeed on the transmitter LCD through Lua Scripts, has saved 2 of my quads from total loss. This is particularly relevant when your 'downed' quad has it's battery disconnected in a crash and the beeper does not operate.
Yes - I added telemetry to this quad (as part of a series of videos) so I can show GPS coords in the telemetry display as well. It's all part of my list of precautionary measures which include having a battery backed beeper and DVR recording every flight.
Sounds like just another component to get broken when I hit another tree, building, power-pole, puppy-dog or small mountain! Nice vid, always enjoy your content!
Thanks :) . Yes I tend to agree it's something that's a bit overkill on a 5" quad thats only going to give you 4-5 min flights, but there does seem to be a trend towards bigger 7-9" quads that people want to "explore" with and work out where they are.
Does GPS have a correct orientation or position to be placed in the drone? I ask it because my drone got in rescue mode recently, and instead go back to me, it got in another direction and went away.
A GPS, which is just a GPS (and not a combo GPS/Compass) doesn't have to be orientated in a certain direction (aside from not mounting it upside down). It works out it's direction based on it's own movement. GPS receivers can certainly suffer interference from telemetry receivers, but you'd notice that you never got above 5 or 6 sats to begin with. Did you test rescue out on a switch, so you could check it comes back reliably? It's a really important thing to do, but even then it's very much an experimental feature not to be relied on.
@@CurryKitten Thank you for your answer. I am glad about it. I was using BN-880 GPS, and it has a compass embedded. My drone was configured with a key to GPS rescue mode, but I did not trigger it. I was unaware of some energy transmission lines around me, and I guess it messed up the GPS orientation. Living and learning. Thanks again and Salute from Brazil.
Hi im using the bn-180,the blue light is there ,but it says me gps 3d fix is false ... is that an issue pls help....holy fudge i done it....stick it out the window ..wait for blue and red flashing,and yea u got it
The height+15 actually makes sense to me. If, during the flight, you had to increase altitude to go over a tree or something, Rescue Mode would be ascending to a "safe" height to try and avoid the tree on the way back.
Thanks for that vid. I think it would be a nice option to have this extra security on longrange copters. Non GPS longrange flights make you nervous :) Now I hope that DJI fpv will get more and more OSD options soon!
Agreed - if if you never use it, the feeling of an extra safety feature is always reassuring. Hopefully DJI will add more OSD options soon as you really need to be able to check the number of sats locked in to make sure GPS rescue is going to work ok.
You wait. When you cold start up a GPS receiver for the first time, it can take 5 or 6 minutes before it picks up and sats (but should be faster on the subsequent boot ups)
I have found you get a quicker sat fix if you have your quad connected to tablet with mobile connection running betaflight then disconnect and connect lipo. I have been using this "8M M8N GPS Module for APM Pixhawk CC3D Naze32 F3 Flight Control for RC Drone - 8M" GPS module from Banggood for months now on 2 x 5inch quads (6 inch frames) in combination with R9MM,s with no issues. I have comfortably done a 1 mile out and 1 mile back as a test, but the main reason I use it, is to increase the odds in my favour if I get a failsafe, along with dvr position, and vifly/mini drone keeper. I have even crashed my quad in a field of tall grass and it bounced about 10 mtrs from the initial impact, when I retrieved it and walked away I noticed I had lost the GPS module. I went home replayed the dvr footage and noted the cordinates, went back to the field and found the GPS module! Not what I had fitted it for but it proved the theory woked and the GPS module was fine...
hooking too the tablet to get fix is only useful for the first time at that site for the day after you get true fix first time it will get fix no problem without tablet or laptop from then on until several hrs have past or you move way off to a new flying spot but the next day you will need to do it again. i like using the laptop for the first fix of the day so my vtx dont need to cook for 15 minutes or whatever on that first start up and no waist half a pack also.just my thoughts
@@casey22857 Same here, I use a smart phone and OTG/usb cable virtually instant fix most of the time! You can also experiment with Ucentre and Betaflight to change region from auto to fixed, this can help with some gps modules to get a quicker fix!
433mhz 3DR telem plays havoc with GPS, ive found it also causes interference in my servo lines too! You mentioned the BN-180, its a truly tiny GPS module, i have one fitted to my Z-84 and another on order, fr planes where you want something ultra small and lightweight they are perfect
Hi got gps connected to this flightcontroller but i cant tune on gps on betaflight .it gos off agin when i save and rebot Aurora RC OMNIBUS F3 FC AIO OSD 5V/3A RC Drone
Weird, as I can turn the GPS on in the configurator in a quad that doesn't have a GPS, save/reboot and it's still there!? Did you set it up in the ports section as well as the configuration section. Are you happy you are wired in correctly so the FC can actually see valid GPS data coming in? Have you tried any different versions of betaflight with this ?
I used to fly inav on all my quads, because bf does not have GPS before, but I will give it a try because the tuning options in bf are much better. Thanks for this video, please go ahead like this 👍👍👍
Coming from Inav, I setup BF rescue and all works fine except when I turn OFF my TX BF doesn't recognize FS even though throttle drops to 885. In Inav it works, parachute turns red. Any ideas? Thx
Thanks for this Video. Now I know why the heck I do not have anything in my programmed BF OSD. Is it that when I will get a GPS connected wiw satelites(after first fix) it will remembered that and it will be visible in OSD all the time or not really ?
If you've added the coordinates to the OSD, then yep it'll start appearing when it gets sats and stay there until it powers off again. But it's much the same every time you power on, you won't get anything until sats appear.
It depends what you are expecting to see here. So Betaflight supports the GPS, but it doesn't support a compass so it can only infer which way is home correctly if you are travelling forwards. Should you yaw round and face home, you'll probably find the your home arrow is completely wrong as it still thinks you are heading in the original direction.
If you are getting nothing at all on the OSD, it's usually a case of the FC not getting any info from the GPS. Double check your TX/RX wiring and have a look at the flashing lights (if you have them on the GPS receiver) if there's one that lights up when it has a 3d fix and you aren't getting anything it will generally point to something in the connection being wrong. You can add a switch to beep the amounts of sats locked, but odds are it's zero
Hi Sir, i have fsi flysky transmitter with only 2 aux channels one for arming second for flight mode what i do for Gps rescue mode and can my Gps works without assigning a channel and altitude hold
Are you aux switches 2 or 3 position. If 3 position, then you could add the mode on as position 3. You don't need a G{S rescue switch, but it's fairly important when testing it. Obviously you could test by simply turning off your radio and having Rescue setup as the failsafe. I wouldn't like to do this personally, as correcting it if it goes wrong is tricky.
Not sure about betaflight but with inav if you have a telemetry receiver and OpenTX you can have GPS coordinates on your TX screen. When telemetry is lost (you've crashed and the battery is ejected) the coordinates remain flashing at the point telemetry is lost. No need to record your flight. I suspect you can do the same with betaflight.
Yes - if you don't have a baro, Betaflight will use the GPS altitude... neither of which are super accurate, but it'll generally attempt to crash into you if left long enough
Recently commented about this on the BetaFlight failsafe video, but hadn't found this one yet. I talked more about having it avoid obstacles, as I live on a fairly wooded small island. With not very many open areas that are public, besides roads. With some sr04 or obstacle avoidance sensors, and the right control board. Would this be possible to set up through BetaFlight, as a fail-safe? Or would it be better to have that processing going through a ras pi or arduino? And let the flight controller focus on keeping level/just following the inputs from whichever main processor you use.(arduino/pi)
Would be a cool feature, but Betaflight is really only focused towards regular flight. Fitting a GPS essentially gives you a homing missile that will crash at it's origin point if you don't take any action. Very simple go up and go towards homepoint and start dropping the alt. It can't do anything clever as a) Betaflight isn't interested in it, and b) They have no specific support for a compass, so the quad infers which way it's pointing rather than actually knowing about it. iNav on the other hand requires a compass, and is much more focused on GPS functionality - so includes a RTH with a landing (instead of a crash) waypoint flying, position hold etc etc. sensor input for avoiding object isn't a thing yet (nor do I know if it's planned) there was vague talk about perhaps remembering the flight path and returning in the same way (although this was mainly done in the context of rovers where you don't know is the most direct path to home is free from ground obstacles) In terms of a platform that maybe has something like that being played with, and certainly is easier to add things in, look at Ardupilot and see if people have been trying anything out. Would certainly be an interesting project though - having a guess at how it might have to work, given the sort of processing required, you might be looking at another AIO CPU doing the image processing, and deciding on the path required and then talking to the flight controller to do the flying part. Then you'd potentially need a whole lot of AI to decide which route looks best/do we need to turn around and try another route/etc. The difficulty of which, as well, is that you usually don't have a decent (or any) GPS signal in wooded areas, so it's tricky to decide where you target direction is. Lots to think about though :)
@@CurryKitten Thanks for the input! I have seen Ardupilot, messing around in IDE, and seen it mentioned when I was doing research when I initially started toying with the thought of doing an autonomous drone based on arduino. But have scrapped that until I become more versed in that ecosystem. Depending on what kind of system you use, it would most likely take take fair amount of sensors and tuning to find the right rates from each sensor, to be able to tell the system how close is too close, yet still get within a reasonable distance. I'm sure it's been done somewhere, but for me it's a project with a few years and much knowledge to go. Cheers!
It probably can be done with a camera and specialized a.i.. but I imagine you'd need a very efficient ai, that has been trained for thousands of hours, so it doesn't take up too much power, processing, or weight. Possibly with Nvidias next iteration of Jetson, or whatever GRACE brings. But my guess would be, the most efficient way would be to have the camera feeding info to a base station, that has the neural network on it doing the real processingto prolong flight time, and keep weight to a minimum. As you would need the camera and ai running as you fly out to the failsafe range, so it can document the landmarks it passes, and feed that into an emergency flight path, plus it would need a camera each direction so it knows what to look for coming back. But still just beginning at this, so I have no idea what they can really do with the tech available now. Also probably best option on the cheaper end would be a kinect, or windows hello, equipped camera that has the ir sensor built in for detecting distance
Gps reduce works brilliant with inav, seems to work better than betaflight but then it's more for freestyle, race quads. The gps rescue RTH on my wing works amazingly and will loiter around the home point when it gets back.
It's one of those "it depends" answers. I've noticed telemetry receivers can really mess up the signal on the GPS where you can literally get no sats, and the moving it 1" and 10 pop up in a minute. Last time I did this it was the position relative to the receiver that was the problem - but that's not necessarily always the case. If you get the issue I've found the best thing to do is take the components off the model and arrange them outside so you can move things around easily to see the effects
I've used Blackbox only once or twice just to be curious about it, so not used it in anger for quite a while - but according to the documentation it should log GPS coordinates along with everything else, so you should be able to extract the data and use it somehow. If you also have smartport telemetry hooked up (like I did in this mode) another thing you could do is log the GPS coordinates to the Taranis's telemetry log on it's own SD card (another thing I've not tried, but is possible)
I always forget about the Taranis logging capabilities. I generally don't use BB with BF but I was having some weird oscillations in my one build so I started logging to try and figure it out - of course since I have not had an issue - happy flying
Looking at this for my current build. Lots of water where I am at and I would rather it try to come home than splunk into the water. But only as a fail safe and not as a see how far I can go - not over water, still scary
From memory (so not 100% sure) it would do nothing - as it doesn't pass the sanity checks. There was a bug in one version of Betaflight where it would do the same as a failsafe in this situation and just drop (instead of return) but that was fixed.
@@CurryKitten in asking because I have exactly this issue: either with BF 3.5.7 and 4.2.0 the RTH switch (AUX only dedicate to it and not in common with any other mode) causes the disarm when I'm close to the quad arming position... I would like to be sure that this is normal before going 200 meters far and try the RTH but apparently this shouldn't happen as you confirmed...
Well, I think I'm completely wrong. I just checked the release notes and it tells me that from 3.5 in the event of a failsafe the quad would drop if close in than 100m (although I'm assuming this became 200m later) and if it was a switched rescue mode then it would drop if sanity checks were enabled, but not if they were disabled. So you might want to experiment to check that out. You can also change the minimum distance for the quad to pass it's sanity checks as well
@@CurryKitten mate, I've made a check in the car without props that confirms your last starement. Sanity check is on and enabling RTH within 200m will make it fall from the sky. After 200m he apparently tried to get back (and, most important, didn't disarm). I will check the system with props on today and let you know. Thanks for helping fella. Cheers
The GPS module you used doesn't have an internal compass. What are the benefits of having a compass? I'm looking at the BN-880Q but there are extra connections SDA and SCL. What are they for and how would you connect them up?
Yeah - as ET said, thee's no benefit of a compass for Betaflight. It's GPS mode is pretty primitive so it's a last resort thing. If you use iNav on the other hand, then you have to have a compass
Everything works perfectly thanks to you. Only thing my altitude on my pad is incorrect. Is there a fix? Speed and distance from home correct. Home arrow correct. Longitude/latitude correct. Altitude screwed
Are you getting altitude from GPS or baro? The GPS altitude can most definitely wonder and be a good 10-20m out on occasion, although it normally comes back around. All you can really do is make sure you keep you quad on the ground while it acquires the normal number of sats it does, at which point it should calibrate to 0m.
Yes - not to be relied on, but quite useful for giving you other data. Eachine is bringing out another of it's Tyro-build-it-yourself quads as a 7" with a GPS
Good info, gps in planes makes a lot more sense , in my racing quads I would want it as I'm mostly under the trees but it's interesting to have for distance and speed.
@@CurryKitten yeah with long-range rx and high power vtx and a GPS I would be happy going further out and exploring a bit more, as it is on my smaller safer quads I do feel a bit limited with range in amongst the trees which cut the signal down fast.
I know theres a minimum distance u should pass before it will work... but what happens if u failsafe within that 200m... will it drop or still rth? Rth doesnt seem to b smart choice if flying at a medium to small park with lots of trees
It'll drop - basically if it fails the sanity check for RTH it'll revert to just dropping. I agree with you, Rescue mode is something that you really want to think about and is very dependant on where you are flying. Can you imagine the carnage if you lost signal whilst flying through some trees !
I almost did.... i was testing my gps but didnt know how to regain control. I didnt realize u shouldnt disarm. I switched my radio off test. Very nice feature for surfing mountains. Sanity check is the minimum satellites required?
what happens if you switch it on within the 200m? i did it my backyard hovering i was only 10 meters away (i expected it not to do anything) but it just powered it off...
That's interesting - I haven't tried it is the short answer (nor do I intend to with the fields this wet) does Betaflight simply revert to the normal "drop" failsafe when it's within 200m. Ok, I've just looked it up on the github wiki and I think that's it - there's a section about if any of the sanity conditions aren't met when rescue is asked for, then rescue is aborted and the quad is just dropped.
@@CurryKitten after allot of thought, I think it's correct. It's already 10cm hover and 10m away. So when I activate rescue, it knows it's within its landing parameters. But full test on Sunday and get back to you. There's another video on it, 7 attempts without taking back control and it landed 7 times within 10m and powers off at about 5m high...
Yes - you can type the gps coordinates directly into google maps to locate it. You have to specify it in a certain way, but if you do a quick google search on it, it'll tell you how to format the numbers (as it depends if the coords are a decimal number - as in this case or in degrees.minutes/seconds - as is the traditional way)
It's not so much a mode as something you have on/off. It checks for a bunch of things and if any of them don't meet the criteria it won't enter rescue mode. The biggest one is the min number of sats. With sanity turned on, you won't be able to arm until you hit the minimum number. Is these change while rescue mode is happening, the quad will ditch instead of carrying on and potentially going off in the wrong direction. Another reason why a lot of testing of GPS rescue is needed
CurryKitten thanks for the info, i could not understand the description from wikic yours are the best. SO IT IS BETTER TO BE OFF? When i arm there is a GPS RESCUE N/A at osd
If any of the sanity checks fail (these are listed in the failsafe setup - but include minimum number of sats needed, how far away from home you have to be etc) then GPS Rescue won't function and wall fall back to drop mode. Was there anything in your flight that would fail the sanity checks ?
@@CurryKitten I set a minimum of 6 sat, and I get the alert rescue n/a when I have less of 6 sats, I thinking to do a test at lest 100 meters of distancia fron the take of zone. Thank you, I'll let you know what happened...
@@CurryKitten Thank you so much, finally the solution was the distance requiere to activate the gps rescue mode, 200 meters works excellent, now I can do long range flights 😍.
I worry about the "what if it still goes mad" and is flying towards my head/car something else so have set up "paralyze" on a switch just in case..worth while?
Ok so I rushed out and bought a GPS module and have tonight hooked it up to a test flight controller. It all looks like it's working and I can see about 10 satellites but the signal strength is too low on all of them to get a fix. Any ideas?
That's curious, normally the fact you can "see" x number of satellites means you should be able to get a 3d fix (with as little as four of them). You can try and move the GPS receiver way away from anything to see if the signal improves, and then it's a case of reintroducing it to your model a little bit at a time to see if there's a "good" and "bad" spot. As I mentioned, being close to a FrSky telemetry receiver will kill the signal quite badly.
@@CurryKitten Well this was why I was just testing with a spare board there are no other electronics just FC and GPS. I have it hanging right out of the window to get the best signal. I wonder if it's faulty?
It's been a bit hit and miss for me inside. Sometimes I get sats, and sometimes I just sit there and nothing happens (although I've not had the situation of 10 sats but no lock) certainly try it where you have clear LOS to the sky, it should help
Some things I would like to know, If you flip over to GPS rescue and then move your throttle I take it the Quad immediately responds to what ever value the radio is set at when GPS rescue is flipped back. Why I am asking is if your craft dose loos controller connection then returns by GPS rescue when it regains the radio signal I take it it will then fall out of the sky if you have set the throttle to nothing or accidentally disarmed. The second is if your radio was switched off the Quad would go into GPS rescue then back on again it regains the radio, would it again fall out of the sky as you have to set your throttle to 0. As you know when you power your radio back on you get switch and stick warnings, you must then set the switches and sticks for the radio to start transmitting again, normal sticks to 0 and switches to off. Can you advise?
Hey Wynne. On the first point, I think I mentioned it in the video - My suggestion was that you should always have GPS Rescue on a switch. Why - well aside from using it to test the mode, if you did actually go into a failsafe, I would immediately put my switch into GPS rescue just so I wasn't in the situation where the quad was perhaps going in and out of the signal. I would let it come back to a known good distance, then have my throttle, and sticks in a position where I know they aren't going to go wild and then turn the switch off. Otherwise, as you suggested the signal could randomly come back when your sticks/switches are in a weird position. It's also why it's a good idea to test out lots of times, and get used to the idea of where you'd actually want your sticks and switches. On the radio power off/on that does sound like a bigger problem. Obviously one I haven't tested, but I think you can force your switch positions on power up (although it needs a few extra button presses to confirm) but won't connect before hand - again, I'd power up making sure that my GPS rescue and arm switches were on and then sort the stick positions out before I took G{S resuce back off again.
@@CurryKitten Based of what you have told me I think I have worked it out. I you do power off the radio and power it back on, before powering back on you first need to set the switches sticks as you would for flying, turn GPS rescue, turn on radio and it will warn you of switch positions Quick check switches are where you want them then press exit for each switch Waring then the radio will start transmitting finally switch GPS rescue off then take over the craft.
Betaflight just gives the most basic GPS support. Essentially it might fly back and crash close to you. If you want anything fancier than that, you'll need iNav and a compass equipped GPS
I have to set GPS rescue switch value to stage 1 failsafe field to be able to use gps rescue aux switch if it's not there then my quod just drops (disarm), Is there any particular reason for which fc is not able to switch to stage 2 failsafe. I have kept the values to 4 which is less than half a second. Using SUCCESS-X fc with bn-220 Can anyone help me with this
How far are you away when testing this. By default you need to be at least 200m away for rescue mode to kick in, otherwise it'll execute the drop failsafe instead
There isn't a mode to set the home position. It's what the CF does when it's gained enough sats. Why would you want to set your home position in flight BTW ?
@@CurryKitten I have enabled the arm without position fix, so sometimes when I arm the quad it doesn't know home location. Now I would only use GPS rescue for signal losses, not to fly home but to fly to a position where I can take over again. This still doesn't answer your question so I would say for experimental use :) Just need to know if it is possible
my GPS works in the beginning and then after a few minutes of flight it stops working and starts blinking on number 4 satellites then nothing no arrow nothing .i I have the r9 hooked up while I have a antenna in the front and back
Do you have telemetry enabled on the R9 receiver. If you do, try turning it off and trying again. Whilst it shouldn't have an impact on a GPS, depending on the position of both they can have an effect.
@@CurryKitten I haven't been able to try it out I was also told about the location of the GPS I have two antennas one in the front one in the back so I moved it GPS on the top of the model
@@CurryKitten the weirdest thing is I use the same to use bought off Amazon it was working before I never used itbut I know it was working because I use a directional for the distance tonight but then I see it blinking not working and nothing at all it goes to the number for and starts blinking then nothing no arrow but I added two antennas that have not checked the
One of the reasons for the solid lights is incompatible firmware between the RX and TX. Is it possible that you might have FCC on one and LBT on the other ?
You can switch between different OSD layouts, so each the tick in each column is saying I want this to be displayed on OSD screen 1/2/3. The only annoyance I found with this is that you can't move the layout of the items between each screen. You can simply change by going into your OSD using stick commands to swap displays though
Hey I just installed a RDQ mini 8 gps and configured it in betaflight but when I hit the switch in modes tab gps rescue doesnt highlight. Anyone have any ideas?
@@jcfpv3454 hey I figured it out. It will not highlight because all the parameters aren't met such as min. Sats, min distance from home. It still will not highlight in betaflight but it works when I'm flying. I did have to disable sanity checks though otherwise it would just fall when I activated rescue mode
The reliability of rescue mode hasn't really changed - because it's not really an area that Betaflight devs are constantly thinking about. So it should still be treated with caution and very much a last resort.
It definitely has its place one thing to know if you flip your gps rescue switch to close to your home position (check cli settings) it WILL DISARM in mid air
Just had a thought.......it would be great if betaflight was able to detect the bitrate of the dji system so that for example if the bit rate hits 0 mbps for more than a pre set time then the gps failsafe would kick in. So a failsafe for Rx loss and also video loss!
thank's but is when all the things gone well, mine is a TBS (ublox m8) and is not working well.. is like stop and back stop and back satellites, i have satellites in ublox center, but i have a problem to fix the gps.. i think is a problem of baudrate or something, but ublox, and the gps world, is not easy, and very difficut to have a bad gps go ok......
So - if I understand right - the GPS looks ok when you connect it up to ublox centre, but it seems erratic when connected to Betaflight? I think that Betaflight talks the ublox protocol so can autoconfigure stuff, so baudrate shouldn't be a problem. COul be that something on your quad is causing an issue. If possible plug the gps into your FC but move the GPS antenna as far off the quad as you can to see if you get different results.
Yes - have GPS rescue setup and then use it in Betaflight as the failsafe and it'll fly on back. It just won't do anything fancy like land for you - essentially it'll crash into the ground around about it's takeoff point (this is the bit where you get signal back and should regain control)
That's something which seems a bit flakey. It's never happened to me "in the wild" but it should return control to you as soon as it gets a signal again. If you've ever had a quad start to fall in a failsafe and then recover - similar to that. Something I would do if I got a GPS rescue failsafe is actually put my quad into GPS failsafe and then try and take back control once I knew it should be ok, so you don't get a sudden jerk back into the signal
You forgot to mention that latest Betaflight requires more onboard memory on the FC...? This wacky height adding, you dont suppose it has anything to do with the initial throttle hover setting do you...? Its throttling up ..but its not showing up on the OSD indicator.
Hi curry kitten, I’m on my first scratch build, I am trying to install a gps on the quad but gps does not show up in beta flight, the gps has red and blue leds so I guess it must be receiving, I used the uart6 on my x tower FC, I tried uart 3 but nothing, I posted a video on the LDO tech help, but no responses to date so I wondered when you get back from Maldives, you could take a quick look and give me some pointers to try out, thanks buddy, keep up the good work
Hey Wez - of course, no problems. Also as a Patreon you get extra special help :) . So don't worry, we'll have you going. A few things off the top of my head whilst I haven't got my stuff in front of me - It can be hard to get any sort of lock indoors, and if you haven't got anything betaflight doesn't even bother putting GPS info up. If you are using a FrSky telemetry rx they can sometimes mess up the GPS signal, so try moving things away from each other as far as possible to check if that's the case. What sort of GPS do you have, if it's not UBLOX which Betaflight speaks it's own language to configure, then double check the baud rate is right - some of them default back to 9600. Check your rx/tx connections are correct - don't forget you need rx->tx and tx->rx between the FC and the GPS
I saw that you are using a lot of AUX, I don't know why but I can only configure 4 aux, I configure all on mixer but my Betaflight don't recognize. What can I do? I'm using crossfire 16 channels as rx. Please, help-me hahah
I think you need to go and recheck. A crossfire receiver can do 8 or 12 channels, never 16. It's set to 8 by default (for less latency) Go into the Crossfire LUA script with your quad on, then navigate to the RX and have a look if it's set to 8.... I'd bet it probably is.
@@CurryKitten wow man! thank you very very very much! I was looking in model setup not in crossfire setup. It really was on 8 channels, now it's working.
Yeah, found a black sticker on top of the antenna side too. Guess they did it for protection.(I removed it) Installed mine yesterday and just came back from a test flight. Have to say I expected some problems, but nothing...it just worked fine the first time. Thanks Curry!
As far as Betaflight goes, the GPS Rescue mode, which you might call "Crash near home" rather than "return to home" is very basic. Using iNav with a GPS and Compass combo it should do a proper RTH and land, but there's really no modern Naza equivalent at the moment
I had to go back and check, but yes the documentation does describe what you're expecting. However, I had thought rather than the altitude being an absolute number, it was an amount the quad would increase height by regardless. This would fit your finding on your low run; around 10-12m + 30m = around 40m. I think I thought this because if you activate rescue at a lower height than you had previously been flying, it climbs to the highest previous height plus 15 metres. To me it seems unlikely the Devs have programmed two different reactions rather than two different values, we'd have to ask. I think this more adaptive approach would be more useful than an absolute height, and would also be safer with spurious readings such as when the quad thinks it is higher than it is. I forgot and got caught out by what my quad did. I was with some friends flying about that were curious about rescue mode. I'd changed some things on my quad since last testing, so I didn't have faith it would work. I flew up and around a distant hill, but not willing to engage rescue mode as when I'd tested previously and some parameters weren't met, it acts like a failsafe and I'd have ended up being on a hike instead of flying anymore. So instead, I flew back to our current field, made sure parameters were acceptable and hit failsafe.... The quad span to face me, and then screaming, tried to hit an altitude equivalent to the height I'd been flying over the hill, plus the extra 15m! It wasn't until I'd safely landed I was able to think about what had happened 😬
That's how I have mine setup, it only kicks in on a rx loss, although I do have it on a switch so if someone else switches on and stomps on my vtx channel I can kick it into RTH while I swear at them.
To me gps rescue is a amazing tool to have it can definitely mean the difference in losing a quad or it failsafing and falling on someone I had a pilot turn on his set up on my channel blasting me out on video I flipped my switch regained video and changed channels it's worth it
It's certainly not without it's quirks, but it's another useful tool for getting your quad back if something goes wrong. Even if it doesn't come back, the GPS coordinates can be a great help in recovery
Why not put GPS coordinates on the OSD? 2nd best thing about GPS, besides return to home, has to be pinpointing a lost quad. GPS coordinates on you DVR will show the exact last known location.
They are... normally. But I'm flying in a private location that I don't want to share, so I've set up 2 screens of my OSD so I can flick to the no coords screen if I'm sharing on youtube.
No experience with this. But GPS height is very inaccurate. So it's better it goes up a bit even when you are are at height. Maybe something as a limit to do this would be nice. Say 50m At my old GPS plane GPS mostly ends at - 20Meter afterca flight so negative. In that case the height overshoot isn't necessary.
iNav is all about putting the GPS features back in the code - whilst Betaflight it all about the flight experience. As such Betaflight will fly better than iNav, but iNav will take you home much nicer
Yep, INAV on a quad (with GPS of course) is awesome - return to home will land it at your feet and you can control altitude and speed more precisely. If only there was firmware that combined the fine control of flight (betaflight) together with really good navigation capabilities - sometimes you just don't want to flash different firmware for different flight types.
Adding an arbitary 15 metres of altitude is frankly nuts....If you have set it to do a Rescue at 40metres, I dont want it adding any more height because it thinks its clever to do so...However, if I fly outbound at a max of 55 metres, to overfly an obsticle, then thats okay....Software Engineers are SO illogical at times.
I've only ever seen one person install a gps upside down and it was that kid that Bardwell had on his channel awhile back with the old DJI FPV system on a wing. I know it's probably a dick thing to say but, not surprising it was the guy using DJI shit, then Bardwell not realizing why GPS wouldn't work was the funniest thing ever the know it all didn't know shit.
I've seen it too often. People thinking it must be upside down as they didn't get a signal immediately and so they flip it... and obviously it still doesn't work :)
@@CurryKitten Haha ya I can see that being the case. You'd think with all the information available right at your fingertips now days it'd be hard to make a mistake like that but, if there is a mistake to be made someone will find it.
Nice job CK, I have always added GPS to my quads, not specifically to use gps rescue mode but for finding my quad when it goes down. Having the GPS co-ordinates either in the OSD, or indeed on the transmitter LCD through Lua Scripts, has saved 2 of my quads from total loss. This is particularly relevant when your 'downed' quad has it's battery disconnected in a crash and the beeper does not operate.
Yes - I added telemetry to this quad (as part of a series of videos) so I can show GPS coords in the telemetry display as well. It's all part of my list of precautionary measures which include having a battery backed beeper and DVR recording every flight.
@@CurryKitten All bases covered, I do favour GPS over Battery backed beeper, near enough same cost for either so if I choose one I go for GPS
Thank you so much for this excellent explanation, it helped me so much that I did my first GPS rescue and it works! Cheers from Switzerland!
Nice one !
Sounds like just another component to get broken when I hit another tree, building, power-pole, puppy-dog or small mountain! Nice vid, always enjoy your content!
Thanks :) . Yes I tend to agree it's something that's a bit overkill on a 5" quad thats only going to give you 4-5 min flights, but there does seem to be a trend towards bigger 7-9" quads that people want to "explore" with and work out where they are.
I’ve installed it on on a flat pad held under the battery straps. Works well and survived a pretty hard crash. Would always have on onboard now.
Great video. I’m building a second smaller cinelifter using Betaflight GPS. My first one was with a Cube Orange, so that’s really easy to program.
Does GPS have a correct orientation or position to be placed in the drone? I ask it because my drone got in rescue mode recently, and instead go back to me, it got in another direction and went away.
A GPS, which is just a GPS (and not a combo GPS/Compass) doesn't have to be orientated in a certain direction (aside from not mounting it upside down). It works out it's direction based on it's own movement. GPS receivers can certainly suffer interference from telemetry receivers, but you'd notice that you never got above 5 or 6 sats to begin with. Did you test rescue out on a switch, so you could check it comes back reliably? It's a really important thing to do, but even then it's very much an experimental feature not to be relied on.
@@CurryKitten Thank you for your answer. I am glad about it. I was using BN-880 GPS, and it has a compass embedded. My drone was configured with a key to GPS rescue mode, but I did not trigger it. I was unaware of some energy transmission lines around me, and I guess it messed up the GPS orientation. Living and learning. Thanks again and Salute from Brazil.
Hi im using the bn-180,the blue light is there ,but it says me gps 3d fix is false ... is that an issue pls help....holy fudge i done it....stick it out the window ..wait for blue and red flashing,and yea u got it
Great video very informative, I’m in the process of trying to install on a quadcopter. Purely experimental, wish me luck👍
Good luck!
If you set return to home altitude to 15 meters for instance, it would rise 15 meters above the highest altitude of your flight to that moment.
Nope, thats not what it does.
@@EnglishTurbines really, and what you will suggest in order to contribute the knowledge and enlightenment ?
The height+15 actually makes sense to me. If, during the flight, you had to increase altitude to go over a tree or something, Rescue Mode would be ascending to a "safe" height to try and avoid the tree on the way back.
Perhaps it should be called "minimum return altitude" it would make more sense then
Yeah I was going to say this too
Thanks for that vid. I think it would be a nice option to have this extra security on longrange copters. Non GPS longrange flights make you nervous :)
Now I hope that DJI fpv will get more and more OSD options soon!
Agreed - if if you never use it, the feeling of an extra safety feature is always reassuring. Hopefully DJI will add more OSD options soon as you really need to be able to check the number of sats locked in to make sure GPS rescue is going to work ok.
I’m at 5:30 and everything is set up how do I get a count of Satellites on my OSD? It’s 0 when quad is on and not plugged to beta flight do I wait??
You wait. When you cold start up a GPS receiver for the first time, it can take 5 or 6 minutes before it picks up and sats (but should be faster on the subsequent boot ups)
I have found you get a quicker sat fix if you have your quad connected to tablet with mobile connection running betaflight then disconnect and connect lipo.
I have been using this "8M M8N GPS Module for APM Pixhawk CC3D Naze32 F3 Flight Control for RC Drone - 8M" GPS module from Banggood for months now on 2 x 5inch quads
(6 inch frames) in combination with R9MM,s with no issues.
I have comfortably done a 1 mile out and 1 mile back as a test, but the main reason I use it, is to increase the odds in my favour if I get a failsafe, along with dvr position, and vifly/mini drone keeper.
I have even crashed my quad in a field of tall grass and it bounced about 10 mtrs from the initial impact, when I retrieved it and walked away I noticed I had lost the GPS module.
I went home replayed the dvr footage and noted the cordinates, went back to the field and found the GPS module!
Not what I had fitted it for but it proved the theory woked and the GPS module was fine...
hooking too the tablet to get fix is only useful for the first time at that site for the day after you get true fix first time it will get fix no problem without tablet or laptop from then on until several hrs have past or you move way off to a new flying spot but the next day you will need to do it again. i like using the laptop for the first fix of the day so my vtx dont need to cook for 15 minutes or whatever on that first start up and no waist half a pack also.just my thoughts
@@casey22857 Same here, I use a smart phone and OTG/usb cable virtually instant fix most of the time!
You can also experiment with Ucentre and Betaflight to change region from auto to fixed, this can help with some
gps modules to get a quicker fix!
433mhz 3DR telem plays havoc with GPS, ive found it also causes interference in my servo lines too!
You mentioned the BN-180, its a truly tiny GPS module, i have one fitted to my Z-84 and another on order, fr planes where you want something ultra small and lightweight they are perfect
Hi got gps connected to this flightcontroller but i cant tune on gps on betaflight .it gos off agin when i save and rebot Aurora RC OMNIBUS F3 FC AIO OSD 5V/3A RC Drone
Weird, as I can turn the GPS on in the configurator in a quad that doesn't have a GPS, save/reboot and it's still there!? Did you set it up in the ports section as well as the configuration section. Are you happy you are wired in correctly so the FC can actually see valid GPS data coming in? Have you tried any different versions of betaflight with this ?
I used to fly inav on all my quads, because bf does not have GPS before, but I will give it a try because the tuning options in bf are much better. Thanks for this video, please go ahead like this 👍👍👍
Coming from Inav, I setup BF rescue and all works fine except when I turn OFF my TX BF doesn't recognize FS even though throttle drops to 885. In Inav it works, parachute turns red. Any ideas? Thx
Thanks for this Video.
Now I know why the heck I do not have anything in my programmed BF OSD. Is it that when I will get a GPS connected wiw satelites(after first fix) it will remembered that and it will be visible in OSD all the time or not really ?
If you've added the coordinates to the OSD, then yep it'll start appearing when it gets sats and stay there until it powers off again. But it's much the same every time you power on, you won't get anything until sats appear.
@@CurryKitten brilliant, I've sort it yesterday. Thanks again ! Just waiting now to test when weather permits(and work 😁) thx!!
Hello . My arrow home never works . Is there a setting for this ?
It depends what you are expecting to see here. So Betaflight supports the GPS, but it doesn't support a compass so it can only infer which way is home correctly if you are travelling forwards. Should you yaw round and face home, you'll probably find the your home arrow is completely wrong as it still thinks you are heading in the original direction.
GPS OSD doesnt appear but wuad wont arm warning is GPS, but im not ablw to see how many satellites are found..... any thoughts?
If you are getting nothing at all on the OSD, it's usually a case of the FC not getting any info from the GPS. Double check your TX/RX wiring and have a look at the flashing lights (if you have them on the GPS receiver) if there's one that lights up when it has a 3d fix and you aren't getting anything it will generally point to something in the connection being wrong. You can add a switch to beep the amounts of sats locked, but odds are it's zero
@@CurryKitten thanks for the help it turned out to be a betaflight gith where plugging in the battery before the gps will fix the issue
Hi Sir, i have fsi flysky transmitter with only 2 aux channels one for arming second for flight mode what i do for Gps rescue mode and can my Gps works without assigning a channel and altitude hold
Are you aux switches 2 or 3 position. If 3 position, then you could add the mode on as position 3. You don't need a G{S rescue switch, but it's fairly important when testing it. Obviously you could test by simply turning off your radio and having Rescue setup as the failsafe. I wouldn't like to do this personally, as correcting it if it goes wrong is tricky.
Thank you!!! This was so helpful!
Glad it was helpful!
Not sure about betaflight but with inav if you have a telemetry receiver and OpenTX you can have GPS coordinates on your TX screen. When telemetry is lost (you've crashed and the battery is ejected) the coordinates remain flashing at the point telemetry is lost. No need to record your flight. I suspect you can do the same with betaflight.
I don't have a barometer will my quad come back getting 13 satellites and have added the failsafe in modes tab
Yes - if you don't have a baro, Betaflight will use the GPS altitude... neither of which are super accurate, but it'll generally attempt to crash into you if left long enough
@@CurryKitten thanks so much so helpful
Recently commented about this on the BetaFlight failsafe video, but hadn't found this one yet. I talked more about having it avoid obstacles, as I live on a fairly wooded small island. With not very many open areas that are public, besides roads. With some sr04 or obstacle avoidance sensors, and the right control board. Would this be possible to set up through BetaFlight, as a fail-safe? Or would it be better to have that processing going through a ras pi or arduino? And let the flight controller focus on keeping level/just following the inputs from whichever main processor you use.(arduino/pi)
Would be a cool feature, but Betaflight is really only focused towards regular flight. Fitting a GPS essentially gives you a homing missile that will crash at it's origin point if you don't take any action. Very simple go up and go towards homepoint and start dropping the alt. It can't do anything clever as a) Betaflight isn't interested in it, and b) They have no specific support for a compass, so the quad infers which way it's pointing rather than actually knowing about it. iNav on the other hand requires a compass, and is much more focused on GPS functionality - so includes a RTH with a landing (instead of a crash) waypoint flying, position hold etc etc. sensor input for avoiding object isn't a thing yet (nor do I know if it's planned) there was vague talk about perhaps remembering the flight path and returning in the same way (although this was mainly done in the context of rovers where you don't know is the most direct path to home is free from ground obstacles) In terms of a platform that maybe has something like that being played with, and certainly is easier to add things in, look at Ardupilot and see if people have been trying anything out. Would certainly be an interesting project though - having a guess at how it might have to work, given the sort of processing required, you might be looking at another AIO CPU doing the image processing, and deciding on the path required and then talking to the flight controller to do the flying part. Then you'd potentially need a whole lot of AI to decide which route looks best/do we need to turn around and try another route/etc. The difficulty of which, as well, is that you usually don't have a decent (or any) GPS signal in wooded areas, so it's tricky to decide where you target direction is. Lots to think about though :)
@@CurryKitten Thanks for the input! I have seen Ardupilot, messing around in IDE, and seen it mentioned when I was doing research when I initially started toying with the thought of doing an autonomous drone based on arduino. But have scrapped that until I become more versed in that ecosystem. Depending on what kind of system you use, it would most likely take take fair amount of sensors and tuning to find the right rates from each sensor, to be able to tell the system how close is too close, yet still get within a reasonable distance. I'm sure it's been done somewhere, but for me it's a project with a few years and much knowledge to go. Cheers!
It probably can be done with a camera and specialized a.i.. but I imagine you'd need a very efficient ai, that has been trained for thousands of hours, so it doesn't take up too much power, processing, or weight. Possibly with Nvidias next iteration of Jetson, or whatever GRACE brings. But my guess would be, the most efficient way would be to have the camera feeding info to a base station, that has the neural network on it doing the real processingto prolong flight time, and keep weight to a minimum. As you would need the camera and ai running as you fly out to the failsafe range, so it can document the landmarks it passes, and feed that into an emergency flight path, plus it would need a camera each direction so it knows what to look for coming back. But still just beginning at this, so I have no idea what they can really do with the tech available now.
Also probably best option on the cheaper end would be a kinect, or windows hello, equipped camera that has the ir sensor built in for detecting distance
Gps reduce works brilliant with inav, seems to work better than betaflight but then it's more for freestyle, race quads. The gps rescue RTH on my wing works amazingly and will loiter around the home point when it gets back.
Does the position relative to the rx receiver matter, or is it the position relative to the antenna(s)?
It's one of those "it depends" answers. I've noticed telemetry receivers can really mess up the signal on the GPS where you can literally get no sats, and the moving it 1" and 10 pop up in a minute. Last time I did this it was the position relative to the receiver that was the problem - but that's not necessarily always the case. If you get the issue I've found the best thing to do is take the components off the model and arrange them outside so you can move things around easily to see the effects
Do you know if it logs the lat/long in black box? That would be interesting to playback your flight in google earth or equivalent.
I've used Blackbox only once or twice just to be curious about it, so not used it in anger for quite a while - but according to the documentation it should log GPS coordinates along with everything else, so you should be able to extract the data and use it somehow. If you also have smartport telemetry hooked up (like I did in this mode) another thing you could do is log the GPS coordinates to the Taranis's telemetry log on it's own SD card (another thing I've not tried, but is possible)
I always forget about the Taranis logging capabilities. I generally don't use BB with BF but I was having some weird oscillations in my one build so I started logging to try and figure it out - of course since I have not had an issue - happy flying
Looking at this for my current build. Lots of water where I am at and I would rather it try to come home than splunk into the water. But only as a fail safe and not as a see how far I can go - not over water, still scary
Yes - loss of signal over the water is almost certain death unless it at least tries to come on back
What happens if you enable RTH switch when the quad is not 200m far?
Cheers
From memory (so not 100% sure) it would do nothing - as it doesn't pass the sanity checks. There was a bug in one version of Betaflight where it would do the same as a failsafe in this situation and just drop (instead of return) but that was fixed.
@@CurryKitten in asking because I have exactly this issue: either with BF 3.5.7 and 4.2.0 the RTH switch (AUX only dedicate to it and not in common with any other mode) causes the disarm when I'm close to the quad arming position...
I would like to be sure that this is normal before going 200 meters far and try the RTH but apparently this shouldn't happen as you confirmed...
Well, I think I'm completely wrong. I just checked the release notes and it tells me that from 3.5 in the event of a failsafe the quad would drop if close in than 100m (although I'm assuming this became 200m later) and if it was a switched rescue mode then it would drop if sanity checks were enabled, but not if they were disabled. So you might want to experiment to check that out. You can also change the minimum distance for the quad to pass it's sanity checks as well
@@CurryKitten mate, I've made a check in the car without props that confirms your last starement. Sanity check is on and enabling RTH within 200m will make it fall from the sky. After 200m he apparently tried to get back (and, most important, didn't disarm). I will check the system with props on today and let you know.
Thanks for helping fella.
Cheers
The GPS module you used doesn't have an internal compass. What are the benefits of having a compass? I'm looking at the BN-880Q but there are extra connections SDA and SCL. What are they for and how would you connect them up?
Bataflight does not use a Compass, but iNAV does, but only on a quad, because a quad can hover, unlike a plane.
Yeah - as ET said, thee's no benefit of a compass for Betaflight. It's GPS mode is pretty primitive so it's a last resort thing. If you use iNav on the other hand, then you have to have a compass
Everything works perfectly thanks to you.
Only thing my altitude on my pad is incorrect. Is there a fix?
Speed and distance from home correct. Home arrow correct. Longitude/latitude correct. Altitude screwed
I meant osd
Are you getting altitude from GPS or baro? The GPS altitude can most definitely wonder and be a good 10-20m out on occasion, although it normally comes back around. All you can really do is make sure you keep you quad on the ground while it acquires the normal number of sats it does, at which point it should calibrate to 0m.
Great job, Wayne! 😃
Yeah, GPS could save you in a emergency. But that's it, really.
Yes - not to be relied on, but quite useful for giving you other data. Eachine is bringing out another of it's Tyro-build-it-yourself quads as a 7" with a GPS
I have 3 kwads with gps all running 3.5.7. I have not seen a way to setup gps rescue as a Fail-Safe. Do I need to update to 4.0.x ?
Joshua bardwell has a video on setting up failsafe in betaflight and you don't need 4.0 or higher it will work in 3.5.7 and other older versions.
@@jasondonavich2758 thx. I will search it.
I upgraded to the latest as I was below the needed level. Presumably there's a CLI option in previous versions
Good info, gps in planes makes a lot more sense , in my racing quads I would want it as I'm mostly under the trees but it's interesting to have for distance and speed.
Yes - I tend to agree. There does seem to be a trend in going for larger quads to explore a bit more though
@@CurryKitten yeah with long-range rx and high power vtx and a GPS I would be happy going further out and exploring a bit more, as it is on my smaller safer quads I do feel a bit limited with range in amongst the trees which cut the signal down fast.
Hello, GPS is very good did you try to use inav? Because inav support more gps options.
I know theres a minimum distance u should pass before it will work... but what happens if u failsafe within that 200m... will it drop or still rth? Rth doesnt seem to b smart choice if flying at a medium to small park with lots of trees
It'll drop - basically if it fails the sanity check for RTH it'll revert to just dropping. I agree with you, Rescue mode is something that you really want to think about and is very dependant on where you are flying. Can you imagine the carnage if you lost signal whilst flying through some trees !
I almost did.... i was testing my gps but didnt know how to regain control. I didnt realize u shouldnt disarm. I switched my radio off test. Very nice feature for surfing mountains. Sanity check is the minimum satellites required?
what happens if you switch it on within the 200m? i did it my backyard hovering i was only 10 meters away (i expected it not to do anything) but it just powered it off...
That's interesting - I haven't tried it is the short answer (nor do I intend to with the fields this wet) does Betaflight simply revert to the normal "drop" failsafe when it's within 200m. Ok, I've just looked it up on the github wiki and I think that's it - there's a section about if any of the sanity conditions aren't met when rescue is asked for, then rescue is aborted and the quad is just dropped.
@@CurryKitten after allot of thought, I think it's correct. It's already 10cm hover and 10m away. So when I activate rescue, it knows it's within its landing parameters. But full test on Sunday and get back to you. There's another video on it, 7 attempts without taking back control and it landed 7 times within 10m and powers off at about 5m high...
I didn't see all your message then.. interesting.. well ill definitely get back to you Sunday with an answer.
Great tutorial! I would like to know if you can use Google Maps to locate your quad if you crash and can't find it. Thanks!
Yes - you can type the gps coordinates directly into google maps to locate it. You have to specify it in a certain way, but if you do a quick google search on it, it'll tell you how to format the numbers (as it depends if the coords are a decimal number - as in this case or in degrees.minutes/seconds - as is the traditional way)
@@CurryKitten excellent! I will do that. Thank you!
What is sanity mode for and what does it mean?
It's not so much a mode as something you have on/off. It checks for a bunch of things and if any of them don't meet the criteria it won't enter rescue mode. The biggest one is the min number of sats. With sanity turned on, you won't be able to arm until you hit the minimum number. Is these change while rescue mode is happening, the quad will ditch instead of carrying on and potentially going off in the wrong direction. Another reason why a lot of testing of GPS rescue is needed
CurryKitten thanks for the info, i could not understand the description from wikic yours are the best. SO IT IS BETTER TO BE OFF? When i arm there is a GPS RESCUE N/A at osd
My drone get disarmed and fall when I set GPS RESCUE swich. What could be tha cause?
If any of the sanity checks fail (these are listed in the failsafe setup - but include minimum number of sats needed, how far away from home you have to be etc) then GPS Rescue won't function and wall fall back to drop mode. Was there anything in your flight that would fail the sanity checks ?
@@CurryKitten I set a minimum of 6 sat, and I get the alert rescue n/a when I have less of 6 sats, I thinking to do a test at lest 100 meters of distancia fron the take of zone. Thank you, I'll let you know what happened...
By default you need to be at least 200m away from your home point, so try going out a bit further before you test again
@@CurryKitten Thank you so much, finally the solution was the distance requiere to activate the gps rescue mode, 200 meters works excellent, now I can do long range flights 😍.
I worry about the "what if it still goes mad" and is flying towards my head/car something else so have set up "paralyze" on a switch just in case..worth while?
er, um that is exactly what an arm(/disarm) switch is for.
@@TheXanUser was worried that it might think a disarm is rx loss and go into to resuce mode...
@@tjp5667 Disarm is a command - there are still pulses present at the receiver to the FC. RX loss typical is set to no pulses for fail safe.
Ok so I rushed out and bought a GPS module and have tonight hooked it up to a test flight controller. It all looks like it's working and I can see about 10 satellites but the signal strength is too low on all of them to get a fix. Any ideas?
That's curious, normally the fact you can "see" x number of satellites means you should be able to get a 3d fix (with as little as four of them). You can try and move the GPS receiver way away from anything to see if the signal improves, and then it's a case of reintroducing it to your model a little bit at a time to see if there's a "good" and "bad" spot. As I mentioned, being close to a FrSky telemetry receiver will kill the signal quite badly.
@@CurryKitten Well this was why I was just testing with a spare board there are no other electronics just FC and GPS. I have it hanging right out of the window to get the best signal. I wonder if it's faulty?
It's been a bit hit and miss for me inside. Sometimes I get sats, and sometimes I just sit there and nothing happens (although I've not had the situation of 10 sats but no lock) certainly try it where you have clear LOS to the sky, it should help
Some things I would like to know, If you flip over to GPS rescue and then move your throttle I take it the Quad immediately responds to what ever value the radio is set at when GPS rescue is flipped back. Why I am asking is if your craft dose loos controller connection then returns by GPS rescue when it regains the radio signal I take it it will then fall out of the sky if you have set the throttle to nothing or accidentally disarmed. The second is if your radio was switched off the Quad would go into GPS rescue then back on again it regains the radio, would it again fall out of the sky as you have to set your throttle to 0. As you know when you power your radio back on you get switch and stick warnings, you must then set the switches and sticks for the radio to start transmitting again, normal sticks to 0 and switches to off. Can you advise?
Hey Wynne. On the first point, I think I mentioned it in the video - My suggestion was that you should always have GPS Rescue on a switch. Why - well aside from using it to test the mode, if you did actually go into a failsafe, I would immediately put my switch into GPS rescue just so I wasn't in the situation where the quad was perhaps going in and out of the signal. I would let it come back to a known good distance, then have my throttle, and sticks in a position where I know they aren't going to go wild and then turn the switch off. Otherwise, as you suggested the signal could randomly come back when your sticks/switches are in a weird position. It's also why it's a good idea to test out lots of times, and get used to the idea of where you'd actually want your sticks and switches. On the radio power off/on that does sound like a bigger problem. Obviously one I haven't tested, but I think you can force your switch positions on power up (although it needs a few extra button presses to confirm) but won't connect before hand - again, I'd power up making sure that my GPS rescue and arm switches were on and then sort the stick positions out before I took G{S resuce back off again.
@@CurryKitten Based of what you have told me I think I have worked it out. I you do power off the radio and power it back on, before powering back on you first need to set the switches sticks as you would for flying, turn GPS rescue, turn on radio and it will warn you of switch positions Quick check switches are where you want them then press exit for each switch Waring then the radio will start transmitting finally switch GPS rescue off then take over the craft.
Why no alt hold?
Betaflight just gives the most basic GPS support. Essentially it might fly back and crash close to you. If you want anything fancier than that, you'll need iNav and a compass equipped GPS
I have to set GPS rescue switch value to stage 1 failsafe field to be able to use gps rescue aux switch if it's not there then my quod just drops (disarm), Is there any particular reason for which fc is not able to switch to stage 2 failsafe. I have kept the values to 4 which is less than half a second. Using SUCCESS-X fc with bn-220
Can anyone help me with this
How far are you away when testing this. By default you need to be at least 200m away for rescue mode to kick in, otherwise it'll execute the drop failsafe instead
@@CurryKitten Yup, I set that value from cli to 100m, and i was 200+m when i tested it
Is there a way to bind an AUX channel to set 'home position' in flight?
Thx in advance
There isn't a mode to set the home position. It's what the CF does when it's gained enough sats. Why would you want to set your home position in flight BTW ?
@@CurryKitten I have enabled the arm without position fix, so sometimes when I arm the quad it doesn't know home location. Now I would only use GPS rescue for signal losses, not to fly home but to fly to a position where I can take over again. This still doesn't answer your question so I would say for experimental use :)
Just need to know if it is possible
my GPS works in the beginning and then after a few minutes of flight it stops working and starts blinking on number 4 satellites then nothing no arrow nothing .i I have the r9 hooked up while I have a antenna in the front and back
Do you have telemetry enabled on the R9 receiver. If you do, try turning it off and trying again. Whilst it shouldn't have an impact on a GPS, depending on the position of both they can have an effect.
@@CurryKitten I haven't been able to try it out I was also told about the location of the GPS I have two antennas one in the front one in the back so I moved it GPS on the top of the model
@@CurryKitten the weirdest thing is I use the same to use bought off Amazon it was working before I never used itbut I know it was working because I use a directional for the distance tonight but then I see it blinking not working and nothing at all it goes to the number for and starts blinking then nothing no arrow but I added two antennas that have not checked the
On the controller do you still have failsafe set to no pulses?
Yes - no difference there
Im trying to bind my reciever to my controller but I get a solid red and solid green light. Would love some help
One of the reasons for the solid lights is incompatible firmware between the RX and TX. Is it possible that you might have FCC on one and LBT on the other ?
@@CurryKitten no, i just downloaded newest opentx onto Qx7. There both fcc. I can't figure it out
And the guy I bought it from said hooked up to his controller no problem. So what should I change on my controller?
Hej Curry ive wondered before and see it again, in your OSD tab you can select 3 boxes for every option but what is it really for?
You can switch between different OSD layouts, so each the tick in each column is saying I want this to be displayed on OSD screen 1/2/3. The only annoyance I found with this is that you can't move the layout of the items between each screen. You can simply change by going into your OSD using stick commands to swap displays though
@@CurryKitten ah thanks that explains why some settings wont apply lol xD
Hey I just installed a RDQ mini 8 gps and configured it in betaflight but when I hit the switch in modes tab gps rescue doesnt highlight. Anyone have any ideas?
Sounds like your switch is out of range try expanding the range allowance or plugging in a lipo in bf while setting up switches.
@@jcfpv3454 hey I figured it out. It will not highlight because all the parameters aren't met such as min. Sats, min distance from home. It still will not highlight in betaflight but it works when I'm flying. I did have to disable sanity checks though otherwise it would just fall when I activated rescue mode
What's the minimum distance from you for this to work? If I failsafe 40m away will it work well?
Nope - by default you need to be 200m away for rescue mode to kick in
Glad it will still drop within the 200m.
hello, we are in novembre 2020, is it reliable now?
The reliability of rescue mode hasn't really changed - because it's not really an area that Betaflight devs are constantly thinking about. So it should still be treated with caution and very much a last resort.
It definitely has its place one thing to know if you flip your gps rescue switch to close to your home position (check cli settings) it WILL DISARM in mid air
Just had a thought.......it would be great if betaflight was able to detect the bitrate of the dji system so that for example if the bit rate hits 0 mbps for more than a pre set time then the gps failsafe would kick in.
So a failsafe for Rx loss and also video loss!
Maybe - not that DJI would ever give any data out :D I suppose the pilot could just hit rescue mode and then wait for the feed to come back instead
@@CurryKitten 😃😃😃
thank's but is when all the things gone well, mine is a TBS (ublox m8) and is not working well.. is like stop and back stop and back satellites, i have satellites in ublox center, but i have a problem to fix the gps.. i think is a problem of baudrate or something, but ublox, and the gps world, is not easy, and very difficut to have a bad gps go ok......
So - if I understand right - the GPS looks ok when you connect it up to ublox centre, but it seems erratic when connected to Betaflight? I think that Betaflight talks the ublox protocol so can autoconfigure stuff, so baudrate shouldn't be a problem. COul be that something on your quad is causing an issue. If possible plug the gps into your FC but move the GPS antenna as far off the quad as you can to see if you get different results.
it is possible that the drone will come back on its own Did I understand that correctly?
Yes - have GPS rescue setup and then use it in Betaflight as the failsafe and it'll fly on back. It just won't do anything fancy like land for you - essentially it'll crash into the ground around about it's takeoff point (this is the bit where you get signal back and should regain control)
@@CurryKitten thx :-)
One thing I'd love to know is what actually happens during a failsafe? How do you retake control? Does it just take your first input?
That's something which seems a bit flakey. It's never happened to me "in the wild" but it should return control to you as soon as it gets a signal again. If you've ever had a quad start to fall in a failsafe and then recover - similar to that. Something I would do if I got a GPS rescue failsafe is actually put my quad into GPS failsafe and then try and take back control once I knew it should be ok, so you don't get a sudden jerk back into the signal
You forgot to mention that latest Betaflight requires more onboard memory on the FC...?
This wacky height adding, you dont suppose it has anything to do with the initial throttle hover setting do you...? Its throttling up ..but its not showing up on the OSD indicator.
Hi curry kitten, I’m on my first scratch build, I am trying to install a gps on the quad but gps does not show up in beta flight, the gps has red and blue leds so I guess it must be receiving, I used the uart6 on my x tower FC, I tried uart 3 but nothing, I posted a video on the LDO tech help, but no responses to date so I wondered when you get back from Maldives, you could take a quick look and give me some pointers to try out, thanks buddy, keep up the good work
Hey Wez - of course, no problems. Also as a Patreon you get extra special help :) . So don't worry, we'll have you going. A few things off the top of my head whilst I haven't got my stuff in front of me - It can be hard to get any sort of lock indoors, and if you haven't got anything betaflight doesn't even bother putting GPS info up. If you are using a FrSky telemetry rx they can sometimes mess up the GPS signal, so try moving things away from each other as far as possible to check if that's the case. What sort of GPS do you have, if it's not UBLOX which Betaflight speaks it's own language to configure, then double check the baud rate is right - some of them default back to 9600. Check your rx/tx connections are correct - don't forget you need rx->tx and tx->rx between the FC and the GPS
I saw that you are using a lot of AUX, I don't know why but I can only configure 4 aux, I configure all on mixer but my Betaflight don't recognize. What can I do? I'm using crossfire 16 channels as rx. Please, help-me hahah
I think you need to go and recheck. A crossfire receiver can do 8 or 12 channels, never 16. It's set to 8 by default (for less latency) Go into the Crossfire LUA script with your quad on, then navigate to the RX and have a look if it's set to 8.... I'd bet it probably is.
@@CurryKitten wow man! thank you very very very much! I was looking in model setup not in crossfire setup. It really was on 8 channels, now it's working.
Normally a sticker on the top.... should i remove it?
On top of your GPS antenna? It shouldn't cause a problem - but shouldn't hurt to remove it either.
Yeah, found a black sticker on top of the antenna side too. Guess they did it for protection.(I removed it)
Installed mine yesterday and just came back from a test flight. Have to say I expected some problems, but nothing...it just worked fine the first time.
Thanks Curry!
Is there a new gps similar to naza?
As far as Betaflight goes, the GPS Rescue mode, which you might call "Crash near home" rather than "return to home" is very basic. Using iNav with a GPS and Compass combo it should do a proper RTH and land, but there's really no modern Naza equivalent at the moment
Really helpful thanks Wayne 👍👍😁
I had to go back and check, but yes the documentation does describe what you're expecting.
However, I had thought rather than the altitude being an absolute number, it was an amount the quad would increase height by regardless. This would fit your finding on your low run; around 10-12m + 30m = around 40m.
I think I thought this because if you activate rescue at a lower height than you had previously been flying, it climbs to the highest previous height plus 15 metres. To me it seems unlikely the Devs have programmed two different reactions rather than two different values, we'd have to ask. I think this more adaptive approach would be more useful than an absolute height, and would also be safer with spurious readings such as when the quad thinks it is higher than it is.
I forgot and got caught out by what my quad did. I was with some friends flying about that were curious about rescue mode. I'd changed some things on my quad since last testing, so I didn't have faith it would work. I flew up and around a distant hill, but not willing to engage rescue mode as when I'd tested previously and some parameters weren't met, it acts like a failsafe and I'd have ended up being on a hike instead of flying anymore. So instead, I flew back to our current field, made sure parameters were acceptable and hit failsafe.... The quad span to face me, and then screaming, tried to hit an altitude equivalent to the height I'd been flying over the hill, plus the extra 15m!
It wasn't until I'd safely landed I was able to think about what had happened 😬
If I use gps mode I would like to use it only for failsafe I wouldn't use switch for it. Thanks for the video
That's how I have mine setup, it only kicks in on a rx loss, although I do have it on a switch so if someone else switches on and stomps on my vtx channel I can kick it into RTH while I swear at them.
@@jibbajabba4597 that's the idea for using the gps in betaflight 👍👍
dndon yeah I try not to use the switch, only had to once.
Great thanks for information .
thank you very much for this useful sharing, best wishes for you 👍👍🤘🍺🍺
great video thank u .
You are welcome!
Hair looks nice Wayne 👦
:-P
To me gps rescue is a amazing tool to have it can definitely mean the difference in losing a quad or it failsafing and falling on someone I had a pilot turn on his set up on my channel blasting me out on video I flipped my switch regained video and changed channels it's worth it
It's certainly not without it's quirks, but it's another useful tool for getting your quad back if something goes wrong. Even if it doesn't come back, the GPS coordinates can be a great help in recovery
Why not put GPS coordinates on the OSD? 2nd best thing about GPS, besides return to home, has to be pinpointing a lost quad. GPS coordinates on you DVR will show the exact last known location.
They are... normally. But I'm flying in a private location that I don't want to share, so I've set up 2 screens of my OSD so I can flick to the no coords screen if I'm sharing on youtube.
@@CurryKitten Oh c'mon. Show me where your back yard is...I promise I won't stalk you. :)
No experience with this.
But GPS height is very inaccurate.
So it's better it goes up a bit even when you are are at height.
Maybe something as a limit to do this would be nice. Say 50m
At my old GPS plane GPS mostly ends at - 20Meter afterca flight so negative. In that case the height overshoot isn't necessary.
Its weird. BF, gps barely works with poor resolution. Inav on same craft and it works great.
iNav is all about putting the GPS features back in the code - whilst Betaflight it all about the flight experience. As such Betaflight will fly better than iNav, but iNav will take you home much nicer
Yep, INAV on a quad (with GPS of course) is awesome - return to home will land it at your feet and you can control altitude and speed more precisely. If only there was firmware that combined the fine control of flight (betaflight) together with really good navigation capabilities - sometimes you just don't want to flash different firmware for different flight types.
just try Inav.
iNav is great for the GPS flight, but it doesn't fly a quad as nicely as betaflight in acro
Adding an arbitary 15 metres of altitude is frankly nuts....If you have set it to do a Rescue at 40metres, I dont want it adding any more height because it thinks its clever to do so...However, if I fly outbound at a max of 55 metres, to overfly an obsticle, then thats okay....Software Engineers are SO illogical at times.
I've only ever seen one person install a gps upside down and it was that kid that Bardwell had on his channel awhile back with the old DJI FPV system on a wing. I know it's probably a dick thing to say but, not surprising it was the guy using DJI shit, then Bardwell not realizing why GPS wouldn't work was the funniest thing ever the know it all didn't know shit.
I've seen it too often. People thinking it must be upside down as they didn't get a signal immediately and so they flip it... and obviously it still doesn't work :)
@@CurryKitten Haha ya I can see that being the case. You'd think with all the information available right at your fingertips now days it'd be hard to make a mistake like that but, if there is a mistake to be made someone will find it.
I bet you wish you had this fitted when you got lost in your old fields whilst testing AIOs. _Would have been far less fun to watch though_
I've always taken precautions - even with a GPS installed I'd use a battery backed beeper and record on DVR
LDO discord tech help
use your MAVIC ! much easier ……………….
Half the fun is building - not something you can do with a Mavic ;-)
so i guess it is useless.