Making sense of all of the wildly different information one can find online regarding FPV drones can almost turn a person away from the hobby. After you bind and set up a drone for the first time, however, it tends to be the same for almost any drone you use and today’s post will help you understand the process and requirements for binding a drone to a radio as well as configuring it with the right switches to allow you to fly within an hour of unboxing it. In today’s example we will use the Emax Tinyhawk II Freestyle drone. This is a 2.5 inch FPV drone with identical set up as just about any other analog FPV drone which uses Betaflight (most use Betaflight).
If you would rather watch a video on this, I have made one that goes over all this stuff for any visual learners out there.
Create A Model On Your Radio
Before you even bind your drone to your radio, you will want to create a profile in your radio. This is so that you can switch between different drones easily and not worry about having to change frequency and lots of other settings every time you want to fly a different drone.
You will have to reference your specific radio for exact instructions, but overall the process will be similar in most radios used for FPV drones. For today’s example, we will use the Radiomaster TX16S radio and so all of the pictures will be coming from it. Again, your steps might differ slightly, but this step is required, or at least highly encouraged, no matter which radio you have.
Create A Model On The Radio – You will want to create a model on your radio so that all of your channels and settings and configurations can be saved for this specific drone. Assuming you have a radio with multi-protocol support, you will be able to store many models/profiles on your radio for the number of drones you will surely purchase over time because that is just what happens when you get into any fun hobby.
On the TX16S, if you press and hold the scroll wheel on the right side you will be greeted by a menu with a “Model Select” option. Select this option to go into the area where you can create a new model.
Press and hold the scroll wheel again when you see the different models stored in your radio, and you will see a menu with the option “Create model”.
If you have a recent radio like the TX16S we are using today, you might have the option to choose a quad as the model type. Do so and continue through the options. You should be asked to choose your Throttle, Roll, Pitch, and Yaw channels. Once you do this, you will be asked to choose which switches you want to use for Arm, Beeper, and Mode. It does not matter which ones you use since beginners will typically only use these switches for now.
Choose Which Switches You Will Use For The Arm, Beeper, and Mode Functions – If you have a recent radio like the TX16S we are using today, you might have the option to choose a quad as the model type. Do so and continue through the options. You should be asked to choose your Throttle, Roll, Pitch, and Yaw channels. Once you do this, you will be asked to choose which switches you want to use for Arm, Beeper, and Mode. It does not matter which physical switches you use since beginners will typically only use these 3 switches, nothing more.
The important part is that you remember which switch you chose for what function, especially on a radio like the TX16S which has a bunch of switches.
Once you have gone through these screens and set up your drone’s model/profile in the radio you are ready for the next step.
Choose The Protocol To Bind Your Drone Successfully – Now that you have your model created and switches chosen and configured you can move to the final step which is to choose the correct protocol on your radio.
This information is probably going to be confusing, so we are including a great little picture you can use for reference when finding out which protocol your drone uses. The Tinyhawk uses an “EMAX SPI Receiver” which is compatible with FrSky D8 Mode.
In order to select the protocol in your radio, you will have to get into the system settings. Again, this will be different for every radio, but in the TX16S it will be the first menu called “MODEL SETUP”.
Select it and scroll to the bottom until you see “Internal RF” and select that mode which should be “OFF”. You can scroll until you find the correct protocol.
Bind Your Drone To Your Radio
Find The Bind Button On Your Drone – Finding the bind button might prove a lot more difficult than you think, especially on a small drone like the example we are using. It is always a great idea to have the manual downloaded to your phone or computer so that you may easily reference it when troubleshooting. In the rare case that you are following along and working on the Tinyhawk drone as well, we have linked it for you Tinyhawk II Freestyle BNF Manual.
Looking at the manual, we are able to pinpoint the location of the bind button on the drone.
Now looking at the actual drone we see the bind button as well and can move onto the next step.
Figure Out How To Set Your Radio To Binding Mode – If your radio is anything like most, it will have an option to put it into binding mode. In the case of the TX16S, you can also put it into binding mode with the TBS module installed by pressing on the light ring on the module BUT ONLY IF YOU ARE BINDING TO A TBS RECEIVER.
The normal way of putting your radio in bind mode if by going into your system settings once again. In our model, we can go into the same settings where we set the radio’s protocol to match the drone’s receiver which was FrSky D8 for our Tinyhawk drone. If you do not see your binding option here, you will have to reference your radio’s manual or look elsewhere for more specific information as it is difficult to assist in all situations. Take note of where this toggle is and move onto the next step in order to successfully bind your drone to your radio.
Bind Your Drone To Your Radio – Make sure your drone has a fully charged battery, as well as your radio, and press the bind button on both. It might help if you set your radio to binding mode first, but it should not matter much. Your drone’s receiver should change to a flashing green light (should be red until you press the bind button) and bind within a few seconds. If your radio has a screen, you should be able to see the signal strength and even possibly get an audible response saying that your radio has acquired some sort of telemetry (signal/information).
Once you do this you should check to make sure it has successfully bound, and then you can move into the final part of the process and get out and fly!
Verifying Drone Has Successfully Bound To Radio – In our experience, sometimes the binding process does not go well and when a drone is powered off and back on it is no longer bound to the radio.
To test if your drone has successfully bound to the radio, you can simply disconnect the battery or power source, reconnect it, and see if it automatically registers on your radio. If so, you are good to go and can move to configuring the switches in Betaflight.
Configure Switches In Betaflight
You have to configure at least one switch before you can actually fly your drone, and one optional switch if you want to make finding your drone easier when you land it in a less than ideal place. The absolute must switch is the ARM switch. The secondary, optional, switch is BEEPER. We will walk through these two and you should understand how the process works in case you want to configure any other switches. You can decide on what you want and you will be ready to do so when the time comes.
Installing Betaflight – Installing this program is not as simple as any other program. You will be downloading the files from Github. It might look super strange to someone who has never seen or used Github, but no worries we will show you what to do. The first page you will want to visit is the Betaflight Configurator page. Read the instructions and download the install file that your operating system uses.
You might also want to check out the main Betaflight page to get more information on the software. You can click the link Betaflight Home to get there directly.
Lastly, you will want to read more in depth information if you want to truly customize your drone and understand how it all works in the Betaflight Installation page.
Connecting Your Drone To Betaflight – Once you have Betaflight up and running you will want to plug your drone in using a USB connection from drone to laptop to Betaflight. You can open Betaflight right on up and you will have to mess with the different options you get, but in our situation this one works for the Tinyhawk drone we are using.
Choose the option from the drop down bar that works and hit the connect button
Navigating To The Correct Menu In Betaflight – There are a ton of options you can configure in Betaflight for your drone and we will not discuss all of them today, but we will show you how to configure the switches you need to get your drone in the air and recover it as well.
Configuring a switch is simple, you will want to once again power up your radio and keep your drone connected to Betaflight. Once you do this, you will move into the menu called “Modes”. Here you will see the first switch called “ARM”.
Once you are in the Modes menu you will need to take note of 3 things:
- the yellow bar you can drag and make larger or smaller
- the yellow line under the bar, where the markings are with numbers
- the AUX drop-down menu
These 3 tools are what you will need to set up your drone.
To successfully configure your switch, you will want to flip the switch (on your radio) that you chose for the beeper to the “ON” position which can be up, down or middle – it’s totally up to you. Once you move the switch you will see the small line move into different positions along the ARM range in Betaflight. Now that your switch is set to “ON”, move the yellow bar so that it is ON TOP of the yellow line.
What does this mean? The yellow line is showing you which position and frequency your radio is in for that switch. If you put the bar over this line, then the ARM switch is configured to be “ON” when you flip the switch to the position you have chosen.
In order to turn your radio off, or un-arm it, then you simply just flip the same switch to another position.
See the photo below to get a better idea of what your ARM row should look like in Betaflight.
The numbers on this photo do not matter as they can be different and still works. The point here is that you want the yellow bar on top of, and in the middle of, the small yellow line.
IF THE YELLOW LINE IS NOT MOVING WHEN YOU FLIP YOUR SWITCH ON THE RADIO, MAKE SURE THE “AUX” IS SET TO THE CORRECT NUMBER. AUX 1 should be CH5, AUX 2, CH 6, etc.
REMEMBER TO SAVE THE CHANGES YOU MAKE OR YOU WILL BE CONFUSED.
Now that you have configured your ARM switch you can technically go fly once you save the changes.
We recommend, however, that you spend more time in Betaflight and set up the beeper and mode switches.
Beeper simply makes your drone send out an audible beep over and over until its battery dies or you flip the switch off in order for you to find it if you land it somewhere difficult to see in.
Mode changes the way your drone flies and can make it a bit easier for you as a new pilot.
Flip-over after crash simply allows you to crash your drone upside down and recover it without having to walk to it and flip it yourself. Super handy feature.
You should be all set up by now and ready to take on the skies with your measly 3 or 4 minutes of flight time per battery. Yes, we all wish they performed better, but the great thing is we can at least buy many battery packs to keep the drones in the air as long as we like while making short pit stops to switch the battery out. We hope this post helped you out, and check out our YouTube channel because we will make a video version on this post soon. Sometimes it can be much easier to see it in video than to read about it. Have fun, keep learning, and spread the word about FPV drones!
