Lets say that you’ve built your quadcopter which has flight controller with Cleanflight support and DSMX satellite receiver installed and now wondering how to make it to actually fly. It can be also useful if you accidentally wiped your configuration and now don’t know where to start.
I’ll assume that already have firmware installed.
1. Connect to your flight controller to computer with USB cable and then open Cleanflight:
2. Click Connect” button on the right top corner of the program window. After you will be successfully connected, window will look approximately like this:
3. Switch to Ports tab and enable Serial RX on the port where you have your DSMX Satellite receiver installed, and then click Save button at the bottom of the screen.
*I usually connect it to UART3.
4. Switch to Configuration tab
Then adjust your Board and Sensor Alignment.
For Owl with motors facing down typical settings will be:
Pitch Degrees: 180
Yaw Degrees: 135
* You only need to change Pitch Degrees when your flight controller is installed upside down, which can be easily verified on Setup tab
** Please note that for your Owl Yaw degrees can be different and they are always increments of 45, which is 45, 135, 225
5. Scroll a bit down and change Receiver mode to SERIAL.
Then change Serial Receiver Provider to SPEKTRUM2048 for DSMX or SPEKTRUM1024 for DSM2 transmitter.
And finally hit Save button at the bottom on the window.
6. Next step will be to bind your receiver and transmitter, for this you will need to switch to CLI tab and type there the following command:
set spektrum_sat_bind=7
and then hit Enter
depending on your transmitter you may want to use different value instead of 7, which can be:
3 for DSM2 1024bit/22ms
5 for DSM2 2048bit/11ms default AlienWii32
7 for DSMX 1024bit/22ms used by Devo 7e
8 for DSMX 2048bit/22ms Used by new DXe
9 for DSMX 2048bit/11ms
and finally type:
save
followed by Enter
7. Now you will have to physically bind your receiver and transmitter, by first disconnecting Flight controller from computer (no battery connected as well).
8. Then connect flight controller to computer and observe that your DSMX satellite receiver is rapidly flashing.
If it is not flashing then UART port from step 3 was not correctly selected or receiver is not properly connected.
9. Turn on your transmitter and initiate binding procedure according to transmitter’s User Manual
10. Now connect to Cleanflight how we did it in the first step and then navigate to Receiver tab and
there change Channel Map to JR / Spektrum / Graupner. And hit Save button.
* Please note that OrangeRX DSMX module can have different channel mapping
11. Now verify that all channels work as expected when you move sticks and switches on your transmitter.
Channels should be very close or have exactly 1500 value when stick are in neutral middle position.
If something is not working right then most likely you need to adjust your Channel Mapping or/and adjust Mixers on your transmitter.
12. Navigate to Modes tab and adjust modes according to your liking. I usually set ARM to AUX1 and then modes like on the following screenshot:
and as always, don’t forget to hit Save button.
Happy flying!!!
Here is also a great video about how to bind lemon-rx satellite receiver (made by Nick Burns):
