First configuration: from assembled to airworthy

Configure in this order

1. 01

   Props off, and a current-limited first power-up

   Before anything gets plugged in, take the props off and leave them off. Every check in this walkthrough happens with the props off, and putting them back on is the last step, not an early one, because a mistake that is only embarrassing without props is an injury with them fitted.

   Power the board for the first time through a smoke stopper, a bulb or resistor wired in series with the battery, rather than straight off a fully charged pack. If a joint is bridged, a trace is shorted, or something went in backwards, a smoke stopper limits the current enough that the fault glows a bulb or blows a cheap resistor instead of a flight controller or an ESC. This is where the first build guide leaves off: soldered, but not yet configured.

2. 02

   Connect over USB and get the firmware target right

   Plug the flight controller into a computer over USB and open the configurator. It should identify the board and offer a firmware target, the specific build of the firmware matched to that board's processor, sensors and pin layout.

   Flashing the wrong target is the classic way a first build gets bricked before it has flown once. Firmware built for a different processor or a different pinout does not just run badly, it can leave the board unresponsive to the configurator entirely. If the configurator has already identified the board and offered a matching target, use that one rather than picking a similar-sounding board from a list. The flight controller guide covers what the board does and how its markings identify it if the configurator cannot.

3. 03

   Tell the configurator how the board is actually mounted

   The flight controller's gyroscope and accelerometer only report accurately if the software knows which way the sensor chip is actually facing on the frame. Boards get mounted rotated for space reasons, and a board mounted rotated but never told so will briefly fly in the wrong direction relative to your stick inputs.

   The configurator has a setting for exactly this: how many degrees the board is rotated relative to the frame's forward direction. Set it to match how the board actually sits before doing anything else that depends on orientation, including the receiver checks in the next step, because getting this wrong makes every later check look wrong too.

4. 04

   Bind the receiver, and check every channel moves the right way

   Bind the receiver to the transmitter using whichever protocol the two share, a choice already made when the radio system was bought: a receiver built for one protocol will not bind to a transmitter running a different one, whatever else about the hardware is correct. The radios guide covers how that protocol choice gets made and what it constrains.

   Once bound, check every channel on the configurator's receiver display, throttle, roll, pitch, yaw and every auxiliary switch, moving each stick and switch in turn and confirming the bar on screen moves the way it should, not just that it moves at all. A reversed channel found in the air, after arming, is found by a quad that reacts backwards to a stick input you already committed to. Found here, on a screen, it costs nothing to fix.

5. 05

   Set up modes, arm switch first

   Assign an arm switch on a two-position auxiliary channel before configuring anything else that assumes the aircraft can be armed. A switch, not a stick command, because a switch has one deliberate action to turn on and one deliberate action to turn off, and it does not fire because a stick got bumped while the aircraft was being carried or adjusted.

   Add whichever other modes the build needs, an angle mode for a first flight among them, but treat the arm switch as the one that has to exist before the rest are worth setting up. None of the checks later in this walkthrough, motor direction included, mean anything on a board that cannot be armed and disarmed on command.

6. 06

   Configure failsafe, then test it with the props off

   Failsafe is what the aircraft does when the receiver stops hearing the transmitter: a dropped link, a transmitter left switched on the ground, a radio battery that dies mid-flight. Configure it to disarm and stop the motors, with a short delay before it acts, so a real signal loss does not leave it uncontrolled for long.

   Test it, don't just configure it

   An untested failsafe is an unconfigured failsafe. With the props off, arm the aircraft and switch the transmitter off. The motors should stop. If they do not, or you are not certain what just happened, do not fly this build until you have found out why, because the one time failsafe actually matters is the one time you cannot test it first.

7. 07

   Motor direction and order, on the motor test panel, props still off

   With the props still off, use the configurator's motor test panel to spin each motor individually at low power and confirm it turns the direction the motor layout requires. The wrong direction on even one motor turns the quad's own thrust against itself the moment it tries to yaw. Motors and ESCs covers how a motor's spin direction is set and reversed once one turns up wrong.

   Confirm the order too, motor by motor against what the configurator expects, not just that four motors spin. A motor wired into the wrong ESC output can spin the correct direction and still sit in the wrong position in the sequence, a fault the motor test panel catches immediately and a first hover catches by flipping over.

8. 08

   Set the ESC protocol, and calibrate it only if that protocol needs it

   The flight controller and the ESCs need to agree on which protocol carries the throttle signal, set on the flight controller side to match what the ESC firmware actually supports. A mismatch here tends to fail obviously: motors that do not respond, or respond erratically, rather than something subtle.

   Some ESC protocols need a calibration step so every ESC agrees on the same throttle range, others do not use one at all. Check what the specific ESC firmware on the stack requires rather than running a calibration routine out of habit, because running the wrong procedure for the protocol in use is its own way to end up with motors that disagree with each other.

9. 09

   Scale the battery voltage and current sensor so the OSD tells the truth

   The voltage reading on the OSD comes from a sensor whose factory scaling is an approximation, close but not exact, because it depends on resistor tolerances that vary board to board. Compare the configurator's reading against a separate meter on the same battery and adjust the scale until the two agree, or every low-voltage warning in the air is working from a number that was never quite right.

   Do the same for the current sensor if the board has one: it is what the OSD's used-capacity figure is built from, and a wrong scale there means the mAh count drifts further from the truth the longer the battery has been flying, right when it matters most for deciding whether to land.

10. 10

    Props on, and the first hover

    Only now do the props go back on, checked for the correct rotation at each position and tightened properly, the one step in this walkthrough where getting it right matters more than getting it fast.

    Fly the first flight outdoors, over grass, low enough that a mistake is a bounce rather than a drop, and do nothing but hover for the whole of one battery: no flips, no speed, just holding position and getting a feel for how this specific build responds before asking anything more of it. Everything upstream of this moment existed to make sure this first hover is boring.