Avoid failsafes with RSSI dBm (LQ is not enough!) 

just a side note : the save warning levels for crossfire/ tracer are in the manual, including the cli commands

Josh, can i just say that you are truly a godsend. over the last couple weeks i have gotten SO much amazing info about this incredible hobby. I cannot possibly thank you enough for what you do. subbed to your patreon and i know that the amount of help i've had from you thus far is only going to be a drop in the bucket of the overall knowledge i will ultimately gain from watching you. You are truly an asset. on a personal note, you also just seem like a genuinely great person with a deep sense of integrity.

Yes JB, I'm enjoing this kind of content :) btw: ELRS reports SNR in telementry. You can set all telemetry warnings by that in radio (like your zorro) ;) I think it's important to understand also that bigger tree give -10 - (-15db) drop. So if your playing somewer on -105dBm, going behind the tree it failsafe :/ Unfortunatly in radio link especially no GHz freq it's hart to say "rock solid" link. ELRS: 25mw to 250mW is 10bB, but to 1W is only ~14dB. So simply it has no sens to go with ultra high power transmiter...

I've just learned something today. Really enjoyed it👌

Your LQ video was great. Nice to see more information on this important topic!! Thanks!! Great video

LOVE the in depth stuff like this my fellow "weirdo".

I just switched to elrs and this is exactly the video I needed. Thanks JB!

Amazing video , Cyclone! can’t believe I’ve been dealing with the factory firmware this whole time. Time well spent for sure

Great informative video. Thanks!! It helped me figure why I was getting wrong RSSI numbers.

Great information!!! I have been in the hobby for over a year and never understood this!!!

Perfect timing JB!! I just started flying wings and I've been looking for this exact information on CRSF. Thanks!!!

Excellent! Thanks, Joshua!!! 😃 Stay safe there with your family! 🖖😊

Just want to say you are the go to, man. Your videos have helped me tremendously over the years. The RSSI DBM warning was driving me nuts. Lol

Awesome content. Exactly what I was looking for!

I love the level of detail JB gives on these topics. When I’m ripping at full throttle, I’m definitely going to be calculating my DBM threshold dependant on what my output power is at the time while I decide if I should go left or right 😎 JB is Bethan Netflix 🥳

THANK YOU!!! I've been trying to figure out how to get rid of that constant dbm warning since flying my first build. I was always so afraid to go any more than a couple hundred feet away from me. But now I know it was just the alarm value config. And now I know how to judge for myself what is a good or bad value anyways. Thanks JB!

Great content Joshua! Thank you! I have my RSSI dBm warning set to -99 and it's worked for me....one time it was just warning and blinking like crazy and it turned out that the little ceramic tower on my ELRS Rx EP2 had broken off.

thank you Joshua for content like that

Bardwell is a legend. Your level of Nerdary is inspirational, please accept my humble like/sub as a tribute to your philanthropic efforts in the quad landscape. Maybe someday, after consuming massive quantities of these videos, I will be educated enough to ask some good questions.

Excellent JB. Thanks !!

Thank you Joshua.

Watched to the end as always, you still do this better than anyone JB ✌👍

That's exactly what I was looking for today 👍 elrs for two days, before that radiolink and spektrum.

Thanks Joshua, great info 👍🏻

Very good explanation. Thank you so much

Its even possible to diyplay SNR in the OSD. Just type " get snr" in the bf cli . The SNR replaces the DBM value. ( At least at Crossfire and Tracer)

Great video, really helped a lot understanding this thank you - this is why i am a patreon , extremely helpful info.

JB Youve been my go to guy since i started in this hobby. Seems like every time i think of a field id like to explore you post a video about exactly what i wanted to know the same day. Youve def earned my patreonship, Thank you!

Hi great video, very educational I learnt a lot. Thank you .

Good information. Thank you.

Heck yeah, this is the even more detailed explanation I wanted to write in the docs but figured I'd lose readers because I don't have cool video to go with it. Excellent work! Also, ExpressLRS does report SNR to Betaflight and back to the handset (RSNR=receiver SNR, TSNR=telemetry SNR)

right on time for my lunch break let's goooo

Great video, thank you!

I'm probably the only Spektrum fpv pilot left but, my DX8 gen2 with a SRLX2 rx reports rssi dbm on the telemetry screen on the transmitter. I'm going to try and get the value to display this in the osd. Thanks for this video 👍

Thanks for the info! I am about to cross into cinelifters and need to start paying attention to signal more than I usually do since I have never really run out of radio link before, but now I need to be sure 😂

Thanks!

Wonderful video!

Very well done

Today is not the day you earned my support on patreon... That day was like 3 years ago!

Thanks man I did learn something today.

Thanks again very helpful

Informative video 👍 recently my cinewhoop with flysky x6b receiver had a failsafe and it flew a few meters away due to wind before crashing. Took me an entire day to find the quad. Turned out one of the antenna on the receiver had gotten loose which resulted in multiple failsafe incidents and sudden drop in rssi value.

Great video. Just lost a $700 setup where I failsafed into the ocean with Tracer at 500M out. As soon as I flew behind myself, my LQ went to 9 and I failsafed. There was really no warning. Would be nice if everything you mentioned could be combined into 1 OSD element that just gave you a percentage from 1-100%. As info, since my crash I tested tracer with my wing at close range and sure enough, when I flew behind myself, it failsafed. Normally you would expect to see DJI video quality starting to drop but the goggles being on top of your head are still able to receive good signal when your transmitter antenna is held at waist level, it is fully blocked by your body.

Thank you! I got elrs working 2 days ago, and was wondering about this exact thing yesterday! Wonderful to learn this more intuitively today

Side note, I like to keep my rssi on my osd just as a refference, sometimes helps me identify patches of interference on long range missions that may seem sparrodic and random otherwise :)

Thank you for the awesome videos Joshua love them so much. Yesterday, I was actually doing some research about the subject because I just got my first BNF using dji system. However even with custom osd enabled I only see a few elements but I can't see the dbm value. I saw 3 videos that you made a while back about using the craft name to display dbm value. Which one of those videos would you recommend nowadays? Thank you so much :)

That was excellent 👏 👌 👍 😀 😄 🙌

Your the best Joshua. I always learning from ya . Thanks brother

Thanks . I saw there was a failsafe with dbm video . I was thinking about watching it until this and ii avoided it .

Been away for awhile JB but thought i would rejoin your patreon buddy, you do deserve it and your videos are priceless with much needed info and explanations great work loving elrs info aswell👍

I'm on ELRS and I like to set the power to dynamic. Then I just display TxPower and SNR on the OSD. That's the most reliable and easier way to know if I'm about to failsafe.

Good info cheers. Love the shirt, where would someone find one?

Hitting pause to say thanks for explaining dbm value with LQ for crossfire. I use DJI air unit and have been wondering how low dbm can go and what the value means. Last “long range” flight that I did with my 5” quad using diversity crossfire my dbm value was -70. The whole LQ read 1:85 -70dbm

can get sensor data from your transmitter too to create alarm on radio.

Takk!

Cool video I learned a crap load

I have flown ELRS 2.4 at 500hz and -105dbm and I didn't failsafe. That value was up there for a second or maybe more. I still had positive smooth control and no issues. No micro failsafes. No failsafe at all.

Thank you so much for this video. Quality of the RC link is the most important piece of data and the way this information has been addressed in the past has been very confusing and unreliable. Sort of like information coming from goggle manufacturers - haha.

I get from 2.100 to 1.100 at about 50 meters on tbs crsf micro, it doesn’t fails safe but seems to drop quick. Iv kept rf profile dynamic because there’s more warning of a failsafe over being locked into 150 or 50hz.

I wonder about the -130 DB on the Xfire as that is WELL below the normal noise floor of -90 to -100

Elrs crux35 mine was set to -60, turned it off so I could fly, just seen it was a long long way out ! Now set to -96

Excellent tuto. Est ce que vous savez le seuil négatif du rssi dbm du crossfire 1 watt v2 afin d'aller dans le cli pour ajuster la valeur. Merci beaucoup 👍

i fixed the failsafe behaviour of frsky, i flew my mobula7 with my emax d8 rc 550m and i could have kept going but i was worried about running out of battery so i turned around, and before from inside my dads metal shed with the roller door shut i could not fly more than 10m away from the shed before it would fall out of the sky, and now i can fly it all over the 5 acre property 150m in all directions from inside the shed not even pointing the rc at the quad, and the mobula7 and my rc both just have their standard shitty antennas, i have the rssi in the 0-99% range, and before it would failsafe around 40 when it would drop out for a second, now i can fly in the low 20's and it wont fall out of the sky with the fix i did in betaflight. My rssi dbm and my LQ seem to not change or do anything but the rssi % seems to be reliable enough for me. Also i just have the transporter 2 goggles that came with my th3 rtf kit with lollipop antennas on it and from standing outside of my car i still had perfect video at 550 meters out with line of sight, and it starts to break up real bad around 500m when im sitting inside my car but i kept my rc link and it didnt failsafe and fall, ill be making a little video soon to show what i did to fix the failsafe behavioue, just my issue now is i conformal coated my mobula7 aio and now i cant connect my usb to it lol and my th3 i crashed into a puddle and i can still connect it to betaflight to show the settings but i cant fly it because the esc's are fried and it pulls 15 amps just on idle lol but i can show the th3 settings and the flight footage from the fixed mobula7 but i cant change back to standard to show it failsafeing on me and range test it with the failsafe behaviour. but yeah long story short, frsky isnt really the best, but mostly betaflight settings make it 100x worse than it should be and its very easy to fix

Maybe we should wait for Apple to come up with a new aggregate metric which takes RssiDBM, LQ, SNB and what not, to produce a simple, readable value.

Hi Joshua! What should I set my TBS Tango 2 at? Dynamic? Also for crossfire, what should i set my RSSI dbm warning to?

hello mate,great video.i have tango 2 pro.trying to work out how to set rssi dbm when at 150mhz,i can find any values on the net.can u help with this ??

I watched this and troublehot my rssidbm always reading -130, resolved by turning off RSSI_ADC and maybe enabling telemetry. Now I see an insane -46dbm reading at 10mw next to the transmitter and feel totally comfortable in the -90's when flying As i'm running 250Hz i set the warning to -102, approximately half the distance it should reach according to the 6dbm rule (my Jumper T12 shows -108dbm as the cutoff) Should I do Bardwell for halloween??? I would basically need a pair of glasses.

Is it the same... With inav and crossfire?

Sadly, using the DJI radio/control link doesn’t utilize rssi as far as I know. I’ve been using the bit rate as my signal strength and when it gets below 10 bps, I know I’m closed to fail safe. But this isn’t as reliable and I’m too lazy to use a different radio/receiver. Unless you know of a way to get rssi on a complete dji system?

??? When running digital DJI combo is it better to use the DJI radio or your own receiver???, I'm looking to go digital and obviously I want the best range for video and RSSI.

Is there a way to reprogram Betaflight's RSSI DBM numbers through CLI?

I´m getting ridicously short range rxloss with crossfire in a 2S. 60 meters away and its getting RX loss and keeping throttle up. Failsafe is set just by dropping.

great technical info... for all of us the weirdos... LOL i really find this video very useful

I have an ELRS Lite (2.4GHz) Wich has ceramic antenna and a jumper T-Lite with 100mw power and 50Hz frequency. I am reaching maximum 100 METERS before I lost signal. I am using in an open field with some trees, not more than 2 imas obstacles sometimes. Is something wrong? I tried a lot of things, saw a lot of videos about range but I can't get any better! Is this the real maximum for my config? Please help! I saw the conector, the wires, everything is fine! Thanks in advance!!

I have fail dafe a couple of time this week at about 20 to 30 yards from my position although i am in the mountains at about 1200 mts. Could that be a reason?

Too technical for me Josh I've been out of the fpv game for a few years 🤯 I used to love all those furibee rtf's on gearbest and bangood.. I still have my X215 but few my bfight away 😄👍

I use Spektrum transmitter. Anyone knows the right RSSI value?

Hi Bardwell, i have air unit with Elrs, and i use the Howels firmware to see the LQ and RSSi value, but is there a way to put that limit warning on my TX16S controller? i think i can do it, but i just dont know how to do it hehe.. would this be a good video to show how to do it... the radio saying the "low Rssi" or "Low LQ" warning sound.

I'm using crossfire nano, with dji v2 goggles. I cannot get anything other than rssi value to show in the goggles. Dbm or lq will not show in the goggles???

I get about -90 dbm if the quad is in front of me and between -85 to -90 when the quad is about 100 yards away. Is this normal ? This is my 1st elrs quad, which is a bind and fly emax babyhawk o3

Ppl always hit that like button 👊🏿

Iam having -100 on rssi on mi Jumper t20, ar 1 meter 25mw i get critical rx alarm.. any idea on this?

Is there a way to add the RSSI in betaflight 3.5?

thanks as always. how does this all relate to the OpenTX/EdgeTX RSSI "Low Alarm" (set to a default of 45) and "Critical Alarm" (42) in the Telemetry tab of your model? I'm using ELRS, should I just tick the "Disable Telemetry Alarms" checkbox? thanks

I saw that hack for the dji video you did but it’s hard for me to fully switch switch over to my dji goggles because lq Rssi dbm and bat voltage are things I must have in my osd there’s gotta be another work around

This is ridiculous. Rssi was fine on my xmplus. But my pocket and elrs rx shipped yesterday so...

Damn, I bought a Jumper T pro and new quad running FRSKY. It fkn failsafes randomly at all ranges. Now I think the quads FC is wrecked :( the shop I got it all from doesn't care & now I have no idea what to do :(

Or fly crossfire at 50Hz mode and based on my experience, fly to the moon before going below a link quality of 98.

@Joshua Isn't LQ a good proxy for SNR?

Had my drone drop in a lake due to this rssi thing with my erls drone 🙃

when trying to set a rssi dbm warning threshold it just spits out ###ERROR IN input: UNKNOWN COMMAND, TRY 'HELP'### im typing osd_rssi_dbm_alarm = -95 like stated when when typing "get dbm"

This video reopened my fresh wound! I lost my Mobula7 ELRS 2 days while flying in my residential neighborhood. And it's been eating at me, cuz I can't figure out what happened?! Just before I lost it, I remember seeing RSSI dbl Low flash quickly on my goggles before the image went completely white static. I remember when that happened, my drone was literally flying 10 feet above me heading towards the corner of the block. It must have had some massive signal interference at that point. The video screen went white static so I thought I had crashed on a powerline I didnt see and maybe the battery maybe fell out from the crash. But this couldn't be because I still had a connecion on my ELRS transmitter, just no visual on my Eachine EV800D box goggles! I never was in this situation before. So I started walking around the block and I armed and disarmed the drone several times to see if I could hear the motors spinning close to where I had thought the drone had maybe fallen. But nothing... and still no visual on my goggles either! And that was the worst part. I think as I arming and disarming the drone, I had probably flown too far without realizing it. And at some point I also lost connection to my Zorro ELRS controller as on top of losing connection to the VTX. So I started walking around the block and to my surprise got a connection at the opposite end of the block. Never woulda thought it would be at this other end. But only if I stood in the middle of the street could I get a connection. If I moved, I'd lose connection again. It was the strangest thing! I put my goggles back on to see if I could get a visual from the vtx at this spot, but still nothing. And then at some point after disarming I guess the drone may have been high up and had fallen and the batter probably dropped on someone's roof. From there I forever lost connection. This whole ordeal has been bothering me cuz I can't figure out what happened or how it happened. Why would I lose visual but still have connection to my ELRS? Why did I lose visual with the drone so close like 10 feet above my head? Why did I Get ELRS connection in only that one spot in the middle of the street? I'm trying to walk it back and remember all my steps. Unfortunately I didn't have an SD card on my goggles DVR either. So I can only rely on memory to piece it all together. But lesson learned, I'm never flying in a crowded city neighborhood again. There is just too much noise. Anyway posting here to see if anyone can help bring me closure lol

Oh, I'm totally one of those weirdos too. 😂👍

Using CRSF at Freestyle i dont have to worry about anything :D

FIRST! 👆🏻 Had to write this @ a Bardwell video.

Good video but the problem for me is i can't turn on nowhere rssi dbm and lq on my quads. I use ghost both quads on bf 4.2. I do not have these options in betaflight and nowhere can turn them on, the only value that I can display is normal rssi. Any advices how to fix it?

Why isn’t there just RSSI dBm % in Betaflight OSD where we set the values for the minimum dBm depending on our Hz choice?

T-H-A-N-K Y-O-U !

Is hearing dB the same as radio signal dbm? Hearing measure of db is doubled every 3 db

Hi, Joshua please i need your help. I have a radiomaster tx16s with EdgeTx software and i wanna buy some 7 or 8 chanels recivers for my 3D airplane, but is important to my to have the feedback of the battery so i need to those come with telemetry, please tell me what kind of recivers do you recomend me. Thank you very much for your help.