Betaflight PID tuning. The easy way to a great PID tune. EVEN WITHOUT BLACKBOX! 

I've said it before; but worth repeating. The best, easiest to understand and follow, good guide to quadcopters. You need to write a book 🙂

It’s like you knew what I was looking for, this video came at the right moment . Thank you

I’m really loving this hobby and this video is exactly what I needed for my next step in my FPV journey. Thanks so much for sharing this 👏👏👏

Perhaps a career as a professor is not a bad idea, a very intensive and extensive explanation about something that still requires quite a bit of attention!

Great video! This level of detail is superb and very easy to follow. BTW my AOS 5 is really super clean! I think it’s gonna be my go-to frame. Thx

You are the only one doing PowerPoint slides on FPV on RU-vid in 2021 and I love you for that. Haha. Great content and I love the way you have simplified the understanding of PID. For someone like me that has studied a lot of maths, your approach is pretty entertaining!

Thanks again Chris! I always put off fine-tuning my fleet at the bottom of my list until you started making this easy to follow series. I also ordered your frame and can't wait to build it. Bring on the final vid!11

This is the best explanation of Betaflight PID tuning that I have seen so far. Good work.

This is what I've been looking for for three years, and here it is. Thank you very much. Your last video on setting up filters was also very helpful😊.

That's very clear explanation about PID I've ever seen yet.... 🔥

What an awesome video/explanation. I can't wait to try this on my AOS. Thanks Chris!

Between this and @UAV Tech one pack slider tune video, my quads have never flown so well! Thank you both for distilling this down to something straight forward and practical.

Thank you for all these wonderful videos you've been putting out. It just so happens I have a 5 inch to tune and I'll give your method a go.

Wow, I finally feel like I have a grasp on this pid crap. You are a natural teacher! Thanks!

You are the best dude! I have learned more than I'll ever realistically need to know from you and I have loved every minute of it.

This is quality. Thank you for sharing. In essens, this is «Pid tuning for dummies - Explained». I needed that 👍🏻

Your a godsend my man this has been the easiest to understand of any I've watched so far! Thanks for everything you do for the hobby your awesome 🤟👌

These video series are a must see for anybody that's in the FPV hobby flying quadcopters! Thanks for your hard work Chris! Very informative & educational guide to tunning ! Just what I needed 😀

best explanation of how a PID works I've found on the internet. I don't own a drone, but your explanation is outstanding and I think I finally have it figured out. Thanks!

Awesome video!! I have been flying on the stock betaflight tune and am a beginner 5 inch pilot and this video really helps me understand PID tuning a little more.

This guy is a beast engineer. Huge thanks for this amazing explanation, your teaching methods are super easy to comprehend and this adds a lot of valuable knowledge to this community. Great work Chris!

A clean aos-5 build makes tuning a breeze. My new daily driver, just ordered a second frame. Thanks for your detailed and thoughtful contributions to the hobby Chris.

Love this thank you! It's been a mission to tune the 3 inch Cinewhoop and the 8 inch Cinelifter and have tried to grasp the concept of tuning by reading the Blackbox.. but it's like hieroglyphics. Loads of us need this. Thanks again!

This kind of explanation I haven’t seen neither during college, you’re simply the best teacher! Thank you for all!!

Once again, so methodic and easy to follow. Thank you.

thanks you kris just a great tuto i learned how to tune a quad with facility (i dont now anyfing about tuning beefore) and i like so much the nice power point to explain all the fing perfectly you make very great video 👍👍

I'm only at step 4 but my quad has already improved a lot! Thank you so much. It's very much appreciated!

What a great video for my flyday morning! Thanks man! 🤘

Great job. First time in 6 years of trying that I have understood P I D. Many thanks.

The rate at which you are producing high quality videos is amazing. Thank you. I will definitely try the "D first" approach with tuning. I like it because it is robust meaning that you end up with a better tune than before even if you stop your tuning session midway (bad weather, no more batteries, ...).

Thanks Chris, nobody explained those teams as clearly and easy to understand as you. You are my new idol.

Another great seminar proffesor rosser !

JB can learn from your teaching method, the visualizations and support text effort are really making you one of the best To go to! Just add 2 minutes of flying every video, just for aesthetic en entertainment, and you are the next biggest quad Guru out there!

This is a 400-level college course, offered as a free video. Seriously, you are a fucking treasure, Chris.

This is the most systematic and methodical PID tuning guide that I have seen. Well done 👍😀

Awesome explanation on the powerpoint. 10/10 would recommend. Subscribed!

How fascinating, can't wait for your frame to arrive an put this tuning guide to use, I ordered it over two weeks ago.

That worked really well. I have a severely underpowered quad I like to fly but has always been horrible. I wasnt as aggressive with the filters but through your process figure out the D was half of what it needed to be. Incredible difference thanks

what a clean explanation,thanks a loot Chris,master of tunning,oneday these videos will be more famous in fpv world

Thanks to this I understand feedforward good enough to write an excel simulation

By the way, after betaflight 3.5, the D term is derivative of gyro, not derivative of Error anymore in case anyone else is also wondering.

this is 🔥🔥🔥 My 800g thiccboi porker Titan XL5 have never flown better than after following these tips on tuning filters and PIDs! Thank you Chris! Now I just need to get good at flying 😜

Very informative, thanks. I'm about to start tuning a 10" quad using iNav and it appears the teachings in this video are mostly applicable. :)

Thank you for this Chris! Would love to see a video on ESC tuning. Demag, PWM freq, motor timing, ramp-up power etc etc. would love to see how all that stuff fits in to all of this.

Great videos! Thank you for going through this. It does seem like all of this can and should be automated somehow in order to get a very precise tune. All of the data is there that can be fed into an automated tool. I remember in the early days of arducopter a self tune feature was developed where the FC would command/read/adjust.

WOW MY QUAD FLIES AMAZING!! THANKYOU SO MUCH CHRIS!! i thought this tuning lark was all hype..i been running stock pids for a few years....i feel like i robbed myself lol

Thank you for providing a mid 2021 state of the art step by step tuning guide! If you watch through the UAV tech videos of the past years already, most of that reveals itself to you... and I'm sure that's what you have been doing too.. but having that all in this compact form is absolutely amazing! And you added a few things I didn't actually know yet: Use that master slider for D-Term (definitely gonna try that), use a fixed low pass on D as biquad (I found a high dynamic LP setting that worked wonders, but still have D-Term noise... so gonna try that too!), use the correct templates for BBL (ooof, I probably just picked the wrong file out of that folder ;D). Also I never could really figure out what these PID terms really do and that wiki-article kinda started tooo high in the maths for me to decipher. Really great explanation on how these are calculated and what they actually do! Thanks for that part! - high i gains are indeed fascinating - just got and tested my babyhawk II HD today, stock tuning has I in the 150s (P&D around 55) which felt quite weird to me but I gave it a try on stock tune and it handles surprisingly well and prop wash handling is superb - even though it doesn't come with rpm filtering. That was quite surprising. Might try this on my other quads too. - agreed on the PD Balance Slider - how many of us are suffering from this? I really hope this is fixed soon. - I think the slight over- vs. underdampening comes really down to the actual feel you want that quad to have. I bet this could at some point in the future be similar to sports mode and comfort mode of a car - the underdampening will make the quad feel very agile and responsive - so best for freestyle and racing, the overdampening makes it more behaved, feeling bigger and slower - I think for cinematic shooting this might be the better choice also to the part of jello in the video that actually comes from these overshooting events - what do you think? A few wishes I have for further vids: - provide real examples of how an overtuned quad sounds and how you distinguish a well sounding motor from one with to much D-Term/D-Term Oscillations - many who start in that hobby use cheaper bind & fly's without propper logging. (thank you OpenLager for existing, though :D). Also Mark made a vid where he got the D just right at the point where he could hear oscillations, but it wasn't quite distinguishable in the video... This would really be something great to listen to before tuning a quad in real life. - example-footage of how you do your testflights would be cool - and then looking at the logs. I think I know what to do but... sometimes you just think you understood a description while in real life you are messing it all up - completely unkowingly ;D - All my quads overshoot in snap jaw-turns even if setpoint tracking is pretty good on the roll and pitch. Is that a normal behaviour? On the other axis you would add D to the mix which supposedly isn't existing on Yaw. How does your AOS 5 behave in this discipline? What's a good behaviour here and how do you get there?

Great video. Thank you so much!

Great video again mate.. Anyone changing 'pidsum limit' who uses more than one PID profile should make sure it has changed for said profiles in the CLI. My Change only affected profile zero. Fly high guys!

@18:19 in the video, I think there is an argument that a slightly under-damped tune will feel the best. The quad will reach the setpoint faster, and the tiny bit of overshoot will not be noticeable, practically speaking. Every time I've tried to do a tune that hit the ideal "critically damped" response, the tune felt more "fragile" in that small changes in the setup would push the tune out of the critically damped region. I just felt I liked the slightly under-damped feel better. I guess what I would say is, given the choice between under-damped and over-damped, I would err towards under-damped. Especially because it's difficult to tell the difference between critically damped and over-damped when looking at real world data.

Very clear explanation! Thank you!

Perfect. An excellent video tutorial. Please also you can make one where you explain about the Rates. Thanks.

Hi Chris, just want to thank you for bringing some "engineering" and "Science" into this hobby. I do watch other FPV channels where many are intuition or experience-based. However, I find your videos more than informative. I managed to do my first PID tune (understand what I'm doing and knowing what I expect) for the first time! Keep up the good work! Also, I m wondering if there another way than Patreon to support the channel? I am pretty sure there are some viewers among the 10k who prefer a once-off contribution! Thanks again!

Very nice summing up and detailed explanation on thee process. even JB will learn somethings today ;)

Great video! I like how well prepared your content is. PowerPoint might sound boring, but for this kind of educational video it's easier to follow and understand as if you'd just speak to the cam. Maybe I'll finnally get my copters tuned properly and see if it affects my ability to rip more aggressively thru the spots ;)

Tks a lot for this tutorial !

Great Video.Thx Chris

Great video and explanation, thanks 👍

Subscribed! Awesome video - is there a D gain chart towards 7" and higher builds? great stuff, thank you.

Could you do a video on how to tune both PIDs and filters on a a 65mm whoop? The listening for bounce-back is super useful but it'd be great to see an example and also some insight on how to choose which filters to run and filter settings since whoops are so popular and lots of people are swapping to higher KV motors so the stock tune/filter often no longer works well.

Great video, thanks for sharing your thoughts. In my experience higher I-Term produces a "stiff" flight feeling. Additionally on HD cruising flights it sometimes produces windup wich give me a "pumping" HD video. It depends on what motor I use for a quad, I found week motors to be more sensitive to this.

Great explanation! Thanks a lot :) Did I understand it right, following your filter/tuning recommendation gives the quad a very good performance, but still leaves some room in case of new props/badly bent props or if I don't mount a gopro (tuning with mounted gopro)? Or should I be afraid of smoking motors?

I think you are right. But I do think that having the rates correctly matching your 'muscle memory' will be the most beneficial even with untuned default PID values. I grew up flying airplanes and favour the IMAC/F3A style flying (I am also quite old for a multicopter pilot) and therefor have deeply embedded muscle memory. I hate it when the quad does not move with speed that matches my expectations in relation to my stick movement.

I am glad I found your channel, it taught me lots and lots about tuning and frame design. As I am currently designing a frame for a sub-250 class drone it is very useful. I have lots of mavic mini motors as I am repairing dji drones and I wanted to build a microlongrange style quad that has mavic mini motors and I can put a naked gopro on top. For weeks I cannot tune it properly and I am not sure why. The frame has side stiffeners and in the BBE I can see no excessive vibrations. However I cannot tune it properly, it wobbles a LOT when flying. I wont give up and in a few days I will try this approach of tuning, maybe it helps. Is there a way of consultation if I run out of ideas? :)

Finally those stupid 3 letters make sense to me 😃😃😍 I appreciate your great work m8 👌

This is interesting. I've been following Mark Spatz general guide, but with build I know will have low authority I've been upping the master slider first before starting PD balance.

I'm trying to use your approach with a 3 inch kwad. What difference should I expect in term on Filtering and PID. ? Thank a lot for your video you, UAVtech and JB are opening my mind one video at a time !

Man, I love you.

Great video! Personally I turn off everything and tune PID only and use filters if needed. Im old school, lol

12:23 this seems like also a good chart for if you have multiple pid modes set up fly high d, but turn right down if you crash, before flying back and inspecting

Hi Chris. Thank you very much for the amazing video series. Because of your viedeos I am currently on a deeep dive into quad tuning :-) - and I love it. At 16:18 you talk about enabling iterm relax. Which are the settings you can recommend? What do the values exactly mean and how do they change the behaviour of the quad? # get iterm_relax iterm_relax = RP profile 0 Allowed values: OFF, RP, RPY, RP_INC, RPY_INC iterm_relax_type = SETPOINT profile 0 Allowed values: GYRO, SETPOINT iterm_relax_cutoff = 15 profile 0 Allowed range: 1 - 50 Thank you very much.

Thanks Chris, your vids have been making my quads fly a lot better! I have a 2.5" build that I fly in various configurations; open props, prop guards, 2s 3s, and sometimes with a SMO/naked gopro, or a 360Go camera. My question is, when adding weight to a quad like this, what settings should I focus on when tuning to compensate for the added weight? Also Because this quad can fly in so many combinations of setups, is there a way to have more than just 3 profiles in betaflight? Or should i just save a different DIFF for each setup? Thanks!

thx pal!

Hello Chris, First of All THANK YOU for sharing this master piece, very usefull!!!! Also i would like to ask you a question: Since the last release of BF there is no "D min" to turn off. Do i need to turn off something else or is it fine like that? Thank you in advance for your help. Best

Hi Chris, first of all thank you for this incredible series of videos. I would like to ask you a couple of small clarifications: 1) When checking for max D-term and then for PD balance, the "Stick Response Gain" slider shall be in the center position on 1.0 or shall I turn it to 0.0 on the leftmost position ? What about feedforward transition ? 2) Is there any particular BLHeli32 / BLHeliS setting that you recomend before this tuning procedure ? Thank you in advance!!

Gona need this for new build...thanks

I just built a quad, so should I start with your filtering video first? It was a Frankenstein of a build, fc and parts from other quads. Input would be great. Thanks for the vids.

I was trying to tune a freshly built quad which flew decent on stock PIDs i setup RPM filtering in my blhelis ESC by flashing jazzmaverick 16.9 and setting up Dshot600. (Using a diatone mamba F405 FC with F40 HV blhelis ESC). I setup RPM filtering from JB's video on BF 4.1 . Everything flew fine when i tested the quad indoor with master slider ar 1.2 , Dmin OFF, pidsumlimit commands executed I was mostly checking the step response of the default flight and the flight with master slider at 1.2 and i seemed to have eliminated bounceback/oscillation but there was a bit of overshoot still motors were quite warm but not yet hot. I think i got greedy at this point and put Master slider at 1.3 and went out in -20°C temperature to get a small acro flight in to get some logs . The quad tapped the ground once and flew to the moon, in my attempt to make my quad fly better i damaged it 😆. It would be really helpful if someone could tell me where things went so wrong.

Hi Chris,thanks for you videos!! , I have a doubt , at 33:01 , to much FF (overshoot) what the quad actually do ? can you be more especify , “example “ thanks in advance “

Really good video. In 31.05 Somekind of dilemma adding some ff or P. Because too much P slightly feel likely add of rate and too much ff much more likely turbo rate during full roll. Please advice. 🙏

Thanks Chris for this awesome approach, my quad flies amazing, but I still have a small problem: I turned the master-slider all the way up to 2.0 and still had cool motors and no wobbles or funny behavior. I followed all the steps before, but what I cant get rid of, is bounceback on the pitch axis on full stick flips, any suggestions? I have to say, that I fly a pretty heavy quad, beacuse I carry a Hero 9.

Thanks.

THX

Hi Chris will this tuning guide/logic will work on something similar to Betaflight (like Emuflight) or you will say only use this on BF quads?

So filters have to be done firts and pid after filters are set?? Chris with this video I had learned more about pid tunnig than for the last 3 years thanks

Hi @Chris Rosser this guide is still valid on Betaflight 4.4 ? I prefer this guide over the new one you have released because i think this is more "pilot based" and i can do it on the filed using betaflight osd or EdgeTx betaflight lua script. Thank you for your answer 🙏

thanks for these series! Want to follow this, but running emuflight. Would that be compatible enough? (specially the filter part)

Hey Chris’s, what are your thoughts about hybrid frames? Like running in den front 5 inch arms and on the back 6 inch arms but still using 5 inch props. For the cleaner air. Do you think this is good or just a Mythos ?

I've got another question Chris. On BLHELI 32, which do you recommend on pwm frequency, 24 or 48? I've always used 24. I saw a video talking from Joshua and another person talking about 24 and 48. It was from a 2019 video. They recommended 48. I still would like to know your thoughts on this. And also, why would you recommend that number. Thank you in advance!

Chris, how does an advanced RC link like ELRS or Ghost interact with stick response gain and feed forward? For example, with ELRS @ 500hz I have my ff_sp_interpolate = on and my smoothing factor set to 40. On stock pids and min filter sliders the quad is very locked in and I feel very little latency in the controls. Does stick response gain still need to be increased in this instance?

I really like the “locked” feeling from higher I gains, but there’s a fine line where it begins to feel to robotic, I prefer the more organic feeling as if the quad and I are moving on the same wavelength, if that makes sense lol

Really nice video! Please correct me if I'm wrong, but I think the D-term isn't based on the Pid-error. It's just based on the gyro. That's why the D doesn't interact at the beginning at sharp inputs(even without fast setpoint-tracking when the Pid-error is high) . ✌️

Hi Chris, thank you for this great video. I would like to ask you a thing about a common problem i'm having on my 5" quads. When doing a flip or a roll I noticed that, during the initial acceleration at full stick deflection, my gyro is very close to the setpoint but, during the braking phase, when the quad opposes the inertial rotation to stabilize in horizontal position, my motors saturates/clips for 10/20 ms introducing a huge latency until the motors desaturates and the gyro will be able again to follow the setpoint. The most annoying aspect is that during the saturation of the motors I can see a "bump" on the opposite axis. This occurs even with relatively low P-term value and no FeedForward. Which parameter should I check for this kind of problem ?

Hey Chris I really love your videos and I'm doing my best to follow along and implement things into my tune but I'm having an issue. I have your aos 5.5 frame with fpvcycle 25mm motors and everything is clean and no vibes on stock bf 4.2.9 but anytime I do a snap flip front or back on the pitch axis the quad wigs out and does a violent flutter sound and the quad doesn't want to do snappy front or backflips.. I get over or undershooting or bounceback it seems like... any ideas what I can do?? My favorite move is the juicy Flick and I can't seem to do it with the aos but if I drop the same stack and motors ect in my other frames it flies great... I'm at a loss

Hi Chris. Do you think this method of tuning is appropriate for 1s 3inch toothpicks? (babytooth from kababfpv) I followed this without black-box, unfortunately. The babytooth seems to fly ok with the filter settings you suggested for clean builds. I did manage to get some amazing flight feel following this guide but cant seem to tune out oscillations in snap movements. Snap yawing also causes wobbling outside of the yaw axis too and motor 3 seems to dip. This issue does not occur on kababfpv's suggested pids though

Chris, I have a question. Does it matter if you tune rates before PID's? For example, I prefer quite "slow" rates, so even a full stick deflection produces sorta slow responce. So according to my logic we should get different PID's for different rates, am I right here?

I just finished a new build and can't wait to follow your whole checklist, from filtering to pid tuning, in order to tune it "scientifically", finally without just relying only on subjective impressions. Just out of curiosity, do you believe that we could be able to follow the very same process also to tune quads of different dimensions, e.g. 3'' or 4''? By the way, I believe you forgot to provide the list of inexpensive FCs you mentioned at @22:30! It's a pity because I was super curious to see what brands you would recommend, in spite of being cheap!

Sorry for the dumb question. What do "rough" motors sound like? I am currently tuning my AOS 5 and am not sure if I have pushed the PID master slider to high? At 2.0 the motors are warm to the touch, but I would like to know if I should be listening for issues with the motors at that agressive a tune. Thanks

I have a small question: Would a very thing rubber mat with very high grip also help with vibration damping since it would increse friction but in a felxible way. (For example i have a very very thin anti slip mat I use for my sharpening stone and thought to myself that might work too)

Hi great work. A question: is not better to check the pidtoolbox without ff? Thanks for the answer