Hi guys,

i am completely new to Drone flying, so i really don't know too much about what i'm doing.

I watched Joshua Bardwell's video on youtube, about how you should connect your drone to your PC first, to make sure everything is setup correctly, before you try and fly your drone. So here is my first problem: I connected the drone via usb with my computer, downloaded the betaflight chrome app, installed all 3 drivers linked in the app and get absolutely no connection. Tried it on a macbook air as well as on a windows 10 machine.

After trying this for hours i gave up and thought i'd just try and fly the thing very carefully to see if the directions are correct and so on. But i just can't get my motors to start turning. When i turn on the drone first, my FS-i6 controller makes noises and shows new info (err1: 0%) on the display, so i am guessing they are connected (bound). When i put the left stick to the bottom left and the right stick to the bottom right,  a little led inside the drone flashes once. So another clue, that they should be bound. Aside from that i get no other interaction between the controller and the drone.

Putting all four switches in the top position and the left stick to the bottom, i turn it on and everything seems fine. Then i put the second to left switch into the bottom position (as i saw in another video, this should arm the drone) and the second to right switch into position number 2 (middle), which should make the rotors start spinning. Nothing happens. Tried a couple of different things, but the result is the same: Nothing happens.

After a while the drone starts beeping, so i turn it off.

Does anyone have any clue what else i can do to figure out if the thing is broken or if i am just too stupid to get it started?
Pretty much the only thing i haven't tried at this point is opening the drone up and rebinding the radio with the flight controller.
I neither have the tools to open it up right now (i am on vacation and was super exited to fly my drone ) , nor would i know what i am doing in there, so i'd rather leave it closed.

Thanks in advance

You have to get the quad's flight controller connected to your computer. Then you can see if it is seeing the signal from the receiver or not and if it is correctly configured to see the receiver.

As you have tried on both a MacOS and Windows machine and don't get a connection on either, I'd say that the USB cable you are using is a charge only cable. You need a data (sometimes called 'sync') cable.

Mac should just connect without any additional driver. Unseen is right, USB cables are sometime just for charging. Test your cable on your mobile phone to confirm that data is going through.

You were right, it was the cable. I used the cable from my galaxy S5, which i use to transfer pictures, music and so on, but it didn't work. So i tried the cable from my brothers S7 and that worked.

So now i have betaflight running and when i open the tab "receiver", i can see all the actions i perform on my FS-i6.
When i open the tab "motors" and enable motor control i can see the motors spinning.

So far so good, but i still can't get the motors running when the drone is not hooked up to my computer. So i guess i can't arm it!?
When i look at the "modes" tab, only "angle" is yellow and has a yellow bar behind it. Could this be why it's not working?

Thanks for all your help, i honestly didn't expect this to be so difficult.

Welcome to IntoFPV Freaxx

You have it right, it needs to be set up in the modes tab. Here is how to do it. First I am going to share a screen shot for reference


in the modes screen, at the top is the "arm" mode. Start by clicking the "add range" button and selecting one of the Aux channels in the drop down next to the mode's label of "Arm".. If you know which is which on your radio, even better... if not then you can find out by switching first to Aux 1 then flipping the switch that you want to see if the little yellow dot below the line moves back and forth (in the screenshot it's just to the left of the 1000 mark). If it's not Aux 1 then repeat through the different aux channels... If you still don't find the specific switch you're looking for then you either need to set it up on the radio or you need to pick a different switch depending on your appetite to make changes on the radio. 

Once you've picked the right switch and the dot is moving back and forth set it to the direction you want it to be when armed (Most people use having the switch towards them be armed). Where the dot is slide the sliders so that the yellow bar is over the dot.

Now flip the switch to the position that you want it to be disarmed. Make sure that the dot is not under the yellow bar that you've just adjusted. Adjust further if needed. 

If the switch has a middle position it's up to you if the middle position should be part of the armed range or the disarmed range. 

Then save and see if that does what you want it to. 

Be aware that it wont arm on USB power alone so you'll need to hook up a battery if you dont' have one hooked up already. Also of course take off your props when arming indoors or near yourself or anyone

Hi Carl,

thx for the detailed answer. My modes window has only the angle part, but the yellow bar goes from all the way left to all the way right. I guess that's wrong looking at your screenshot.

So now i added a range to arm and went through all the aux channels flipping every available switch on my radio, but the yellow dot didn't move at all. For none of them. Not really sure what i am doing wrong this time

On the other hand, i found out (by accident ) that i can arm and disarm my drone by putting the throttle stick to the bottom right (arm) or bottom left (disarm) for 2 seconds or so. But now i have the next problem. Even though my receiver seems to be setup as it should be, when pushing the throttle stick up just the tinyiest little bit, the motors seem to go to maximum speed. So there is only motors off or motors at full speed, but nothing in between.

When i go to the receiver tab, the bar goes to 1000 for throttle stick all the way down to 2000 for throttle stick all the way up. At around 1100 the motors start spinning and within 2 seconds or so, they make the same sound (so i guess they are at the same speed) as they make when i push the stick to 2000. Now i am a bit afraid to put the props on and try flying, because to me it sounds like the drone will be gone within the first second

On most transmittrers the first 4 channels are set, but any additional channels need to be mapped.
This sounds to me like you have not mapped a switch to a channel and thus nothing seems to happen as your receiver does not get anything byond the first 4 channel.
Check the transmitter menu and see if you can find a mixer where you can add a 5th channel, link this one to a switch and see if you can get "AUX1" to change value (as in, the yellow dot should move)

If you haven't calibrated the ESCs, you should do so.

To calibrate, follow this procedure.

1. REMOVE THE PROPELLERS!
2. Connect the quad to the computer and start the configurator.
3. Do not connect a battery to the quad yet.
4. Go to the motors tab, enable motor control and move the master slider to maximum.
5. Connect the battery to the quad. The ESCs will make the startup tone and some more tones.
6. Move the master slider to minimum. The ESCs will make some more tones.
7. When the ESCs stop beeping, remove the battery and disconnect from the computer.

The ESCs are now calibrated and you should have a gradual increase in speed as you increase the throttle.

Note that if you arm the quad and increase the throttle on the bench with no propellers, you will see strange things like the motors increasing speed all on their own. This is because the flight controller is now trying to fly the quad but because there are no propellers, it does not see any reaction to what it is trying to do and keeps on trying harder and harder.

@Fint thanks, i am trying to find some videos on how to do the mapping!

@unseen thanks as well. For some reason it didn't work on the first try (just made the normal sound when plugging in the battery), but on the second try everything went as you described and the motors sounds much better now! they still keep increasing in speed, but it takes much longer now and i can here differences in speed when moving the throttle stick. guess the increase is because there are no props on.

One more question: i read somewhere, that you can import whole configs. Is there maybe a good noob config that i can just import and that works best for a beginner?

(11-Sep-2017, 12:57 PM)freaxx Wrote: One more question: i read somewhere, that you can import whole configs. Is there maybe a good noob config that i can just import and that works best for a beginner?

Not something I'd recommend. The only time it would be safe or useful to import a configuration would be if it was made on an identical quad with the same release of firmware and where all the parts - receiver, motors, frame, propellers, battery and radio configuration are exactly the same.

I posted an thread after my first build explaining how there was quite a bit of stuff that needs to be configured in BF for a new quad. here is the link:

http://intofpv.com/t-sometimes-betafligh...n-defaults

I actually go back to that post now when needed to make sure that I am covering all the basics. I configure a handful of things differently now than I did with that quad but it works as a decent checklist on what I need to get done.

Also I mention in the article a good prowashed article that helped me out and might help you out as well.

The best new guy stuff is already set in defaults for stuff like PIDs, Rates, and some of the basic options on the config screen. The rest of the things that you need to set up are specific to your individual quad. The only way that it would make sense to input a configuration is on a one-for-one exact clone of quad. This is slightly easier on a wizard but there are still factors that aren't going to be the same for everyone such as radio configuration, receiver and type of props used. These factors alone would account for about half of the settings that I mention in my thread linked above.

hi all! Please I need help to start my wizard 220x after succesful flashing to latest (stable) firmware and than with all setup (as Joshua Bardwell recommends) + motor calibrations...everything done succesfully and repeated couple of times, just to make sure

But till than everything looks fine, as on videos and manuals. When I plug the battery to power on drone, I get only 3 beeps and stable red light on main board... no start sequence, no activity (red) light, no motor LEDs, no signal to Tx on board.

So nothing works and I am not able to connect Rx and flight.

Drone was just bought and never flight.

If you know how to help, please let me know.

Hi Everyone, 

I have a similar problem. I have connected my wizzard 220s to betaflight and set up all aux channels and modes. When the battery is connected for some reason the motors are not turning at all even when its armed. Any one had similar issue? any help would be massively appreciated as i am new to this.

(15-Apr-2020, 11:15 PM)hellomate Wrote: Hi Everyone, 

I have a similar problem. I have connected my wizzard 220s to betaflight and set up all aux channels and modes. When the battery is connected for some reason the motors are not turning at all even when its armed. Any one had similar issue? any help would be massively appreciated as i am new to this.

Welcome

I take it you have bound your transmitter the the receiver? What transmitter and receiver do you have?

If your transmitter is bound to the receiver, test that the motors do actually spin by using the sliders on the Motors tab in Betaflight Configurator. You need a LiPo plugged in and you need to click the little switch to say you understand the risks. Take your props off when you do this test, obviously

Let us know the answers to the above questions and if the issue persists, we can continue to help you troubleshooting it.

(16-Apr-2020, 12:11 AM)SnowLeopardFPV Wrote: Welcome

I take it you have bound your transmitter the the receiver? What transmitter and receiver do you have?

If your transmitter is bound to the receiver, test that the motors do actually spin by using the sliders on the Motors tab in Betaflight Configurator. You need a LiPo plugged in and you need to click the little switch to say you understand the risks. Take your props off when you do this test, obviously

Let us know the answers to the above questions and if the issue persists, we can continue to help you troubleshooting it.

Hi SnowLeopardFPV, 

Thank you for your prompt reply. I've tried spinning the motors through Betaflight with battery connected and this didn't work. When armed, the tone changed on the FPV suggesting its bound. I've looked through almost all tutorials online and nothing seems to make the motors move.

Thanks