Learn TX16s (aka OpenTX) logical switches and special functions the easy way. Clear and concise, explained simply for the beginner.
Hey everybody. Steve here. Welcome to the fifth video in my radio, master TX 16 S series in this video, we’re going to take a much closer look at logical switches and special functions. Now, for those of you who are unaware of the fact that you were watching the fifth video in a series, please direct your attention to the description below where there’ll be a link to the playlist that contains all the videos in this series. So this series is primarily directed at multirotor users who are using a beta flight. And the protocol that we’re going to be using in this video is an fr sky D 16. If you’re using a different protocol, I still feel that you’re going to get value out of this video in terms of learning what logical switches in special functions do. So please stick around. All right. So what we’re getting ready to do is not easy. And instead of starting at zero and walking you through from zero to 10, I want to just go straight to 10. And I want to show you what our final goal is, because I think that if you can see the final product as we’re going through all of the steps, it will help you to understand what we’re trying to accomplish.
What we’re trying to accomplish is the ability to tune our P IDs in flight on the fly using only three switches on the radio and having audio cues so that we never ever have to look down at our radio. Now, I am aware of the fact that beta flight has Lewis scripts, which accomplishes the same goal. My only issue with the Lewis scripts is that I still find myself looking down a lot at the radio. As I try to navigate through the menus to make my changes with this methodology and the audio cues. You’ll just flick a switch, make your change. And you’ll never have to look down. And as an added bonus in a future video in the series, we’re actually going to take this three switch approach and combine it with the beta flight louis’ scripts so that you get the best of both worlds.
Now, I also want to acknowledge the fact that my three switch PID tuning in the air technique is rendered completely obsolete if you happen to have goggles and an on-screen display. But the fact of the matter is is that some people like to fly line of sight and other people either have not purchased goggles yet, or just plain simply can’t afford them. Having acknowledged that having goggles in an on-screen display is the single best methodology for which you can PID tune in the air. I still submit this as an alternative solution and it also makes for a great example for my logical switches and special functions video. So without further ado, let’s take a look at what we’re trying to accomplish, whether or not, you know, how to tune your P IDs at this point is irrelevant. The important thing here is to see how we’ve used logical switches and special functions to accomplish our goal. So let’s take a look at switch S a switch S a okay, is going to have three values. It’s going to have roll pitch and yaw. This is my role. This is my pitch. This would be my yaw and switch B is going to be my PID values. So proportional and a girl and derivative. So if I wanted to change, say for example, role integral, all I would have to do this is already in the role position. I’ll flip this role integral and I get rolled in a girl Here we get we’re all derivative and then Berlin to grow. We’re all proportional. Yeah. Back to role proportional. Likewise, I can use, I can flip this switch To proportional and proportional.
Okay. So you kind of get an idea that we’re multiplying these two, three position switches together to get nine different values. All right. So if we’re up in the air and we decide we need to change our role proportional, or Just kind of proportional role proportional, We’re going to get into rural proportional and say our, our current setting is something like 50 R. It’s an arbitrary number. What we’re going to use SC to do is if our current value is 50 and we wanted to change it by an increment of five, we would use the S C switch and we would flick it one, two, three, four, five, and it would actually change the value on the fly. And then essentially at this point, your quad would fly differently. Once you get your quad flying the way you like it, essentially, what you would do is you would land. You could look down at your beta flight louis’ script screen. You could actually save the changes right there. So that’s what our three switches do. So now what our problem is is that currently there’s no way for beta flight to be able to accept nine different values on one channel.
So what we’re going to do is we’re going to combine S a N S B using logical switches and special functions. And we’re going to send them to a dummy channel that has nine different values that can be read by beta flight on the adjustment screen. And this is essentially what it will look like. So we’re going to, we’re going to send everything to one channel, and we’re going to have increments of 25. You’ll see that in a little bit. And so beta, flight’s going to be able to ascertain based on where the little cursor is, what range we’re in and based on that, we’ll be able to apply a beta flight change for that particular value. So we’re going to actually have nine of them. And as you can see, roll P roll, I rolled D and it keeps going down for all nine.
All right. So another thing that I want to show you is how we’ve combined S a N S B to affect channel 11. Right now, channel 11 is value is negative a hundred. And if I were to flick SB, you’ll notice that channel nine and channel 11, both are impacted roll into integral. Okay. Channel channel nine is impacted and channel 11 change to negative 75. If we flick it again, it’ll change to negative 50. Well derivative. All right. So right now you can see the channel 11 is at negative 50, and then if we reset the deck,
We’re all integral, we’re all proportional. And then change this to pitch. We’ll be at negative 25 proportional and then zero pitch integral, And then 25 Pitch derivative. We have to reset the deck integral pitch, proportional yall proportional, and we’re at 50, your integral 75. You are derivative.
So you’ll see how that comes into play later. But essentially what we’ve done is we’ve taken essay and SB and we’ve combined them into logical switches. So what we’ve done here is we’ve taken the S a N S B up switches, and we’ve combined them into a single value called logical switch one. And then if we flip to special functions and we go, and we find our logical switch one, right here, it is being assigned a task. And that task is to override channel 11 and set it to negative a hundred. So you already saw that in action. And what channel 11 is, if we go back to our inputs, we’ve set channel 11, up as a dummy, we need an available channel and channel 11 was open. So we used it. So there’s there, it isn’t inputs. And here it is on mixes. It’s just a dummy channel.
And as you can tell, I have a bunch of overrides for channel 11. We’re going to come back to all of this. Then the next thing that we did was the same thing that we’ve done in a previous video, where we’re using special functions to play tracks. So stick around and I’ll walk you through all the data entry to make all of this a reality. All right, good news. Bad news. The bad news is that we’ve got to do a bunch of data entry. The good news is that we’re going to be doing it in open TX companion, as opposed to doing it on the radio. So that it’ll take one 10th of the time. So let’s get started. First thing we want to do is set up our new inputs while we’re going to need an input for roll pitch yaw. And as let’s see here, let’s call it RP. Y And as previously mentioned, the source for that is going to be switched. S We’re going to need one for PID, and that’s going to be SB, And we’re going to need one for our incremental changer. And that’s going to be S switch S C and that’ll do it for inputs. And at this point, Alrighty, so now we’re ready to move on to our mixes. And the first mix that we’re gonna want to do is input eight on S a, which is roll pitch yaw. So go to mixes and let’s start a new line, and we’re going to call this one roll. And we know that the source is going to be roll pitchy off. And then we want this to be when the essay switches in the up position. Like, so now, because the next two are going to be so similar to this one, we can actually go here and we can say duplicate, and we can say duplicate again. All right. So here, we’ve got role. Now we want pitch. And this is when the essay is in the middle position. And then we’re going to do, y’all
Using Input eight, an essay in the down position, like, so, so there’s art roll pitch. Y’all all right. Likewise, we gotta set up a switch SB, which SB is going to be on and put nine. So mixes channel nine, let’s do RP IDs, which has, And this is going to be off the PID. And this has got to be when the switch SB is in the up position. All right. And we can copy this or duplicated, I guess I Should say Proportional integral. That’s when the switch is in the middle position And then derivative. And that is when the switches in the down position. Like, so, all right. So now the mix on S C’s going to be a little bit different. We’re going to go here. We’ve got a channel 10, and this one’s going to be our incremental changer.
And here, we’re just going to specify the switch, which is SC. And then we’re not going to have anything down here, so let’s just go ahead and select, okay. And now we’ve got our channel 10. Alright, so now it’s time to get into the nitty-gritty. And in order to get in the nitty-gritty, we’ve got to assigned some illogical switches. So let’s go ahead and pop over to logical switch. And, uh, the logical switch page is extremely powerful. It’s got a lot of different functions, but for our purposes here today, we’re only going to be using the and function. Okay? So what we want to do is we want to say when S a is in the up position, and as B are in the up position, something is going to happen. And that’s something that happened is what we’re going to define for ELA one in special functions. But for now, we have to assign logical switches for every possible switch combination that we have while we’ve got three position switch and a three position switch for a total of nine different possibilities for each possibility, we’re going to assign a single logical switch. So what I can do here is copy paste, paste.
So essay in the up, the only thing I want to change here is this is going to be SB to the middle. It’s going to be SB to the down. So now I’m going to start all over again with, and, and this is going to be essay to the middle And S be in the up position, copy twice, paste it twice. And there it is. Essay got three times essay, middle essay down, up, middle, down, up metal, down, up middle down. Okay. So you remember earlier, I said, we needed to create a dummy switch. That’s going to go to a channel. Well, that switch is not going to be a real switch on the radio. It’s going to be a logical switch. So what we’re going to do here is we’re just simply going to create one more logical switch call Elton. And we’re not going to put any parameters here whatsoever. So from here on logical switches, we’re going to bounce back to inputs and on input 11, we’re going to create a deal. Okay. And the source, this time is going to be that L 10 And Then switch. We don’t have to do anything with, and we select, okay. And then When we go to mixes, we’re going to do the exact same thing. That’s our dummy, our source is going to be out 10, and we don’t have to put anything there. And now we’ve got a dummy switch.
And now what we’re going to want to do is we’re going to further define what all of these guys do when these values are true. These values are either going to be a one or zero. It’s either going to be true or false. So what we’re going to do is we’re going to further define what happens when they are true. So when a is up and be as up, what are we going to do with [inaudible], let’s go to find it. First thing we want to do is come here and we want to say L Oh one, all right. And what we’re going to do, go back to mixes and figure out what our channel is. All right. So our dummy channel is channel 11. So what we want to do is logical switch. Number one, we are going to set it to override channel 11, and we’re going to set a value. And I just know this it’s 100. If that’s confusing to you, just give me a few more moments to do the rest of the data entry, and then you’ll be able to see it better. So there’s, [inaudible], let’s go ahead. And we gotta make, we gotta make eight more of these.
All right. But we’re not done yet. Um, we’ve got to put our values. So this value is actually going to be negative. Yeah. A hundred and negative 75. And now you can see how these logical are overriding channel 11. We got to turn them all on, save our work.
All right. So remember now our whole goal with all of this stuff is to drive all of the decisions to channel 11 so that we can override channel 11 with specific value. And then we’re going to assign those values on the adjustments page and beta flight. Let’s see if the changes that we made did any good and how we’ll know that is by when we flip one of these switches as a ARS S B we should not only affect the channel that they’re on. Like for example, S a is on channel eight, ESPY’s on channel nine, but it will also affect channel 11. So let’s go ahead and take SB and let’s drop it down to the middle position that should affect channel nine, which is at negative a hundred and channel 11, which is also at negative a hundred. And there they are. All right. So channel nine is now in the zero position because this represents negative 100. This is zero, and this is 100 that’s total throw, uh, of SIRVA, for example. Um, but if you also notice channel 11 moved, it went from 100 to negative 75, because that’s what we told it to do. So likewise, if we flip it one more time, you’ll see that both nine and 11 will move nine, went all the way to 111 went to negative 50. And if I keep changing, here’s 11 negative 25. You can see that Effecting two values, No matter what we do, which is exactly what we wanted to do. Channel 11, here is the linchpin for the whole operation channel 11 is what’s going to be connected to beta flight and make everything work for us. Now there’s something else that we also wanted to do for each of these, uh, logical switches. All right. So going back to the logical switches, when [inaudible] is S a up S B up, that is role proportional. So let’s go defined [inaudible] when Ella one is True, play a track, and the sun’s going to be rolled proportional. So that of the functionality that will make it You’re integral your proportion pitch derivative.
All right. So all those are set up and we can pull up simulator Role, integral role proportional role, integral role, derivative pitch, derivative pitch, integral pitch, proportional yall, proportional. You are integral, you are derivative.
All right. We have accomplished a heck of a lot in this video, and I’m going to wrap things up here right now. Uh, if things are still a little foggy in your head, don’t let that bother you. This is not easy stuff. Okay. Uh, my recommendation to you is that you now know a heck of a lot more than you did 20 minutes ago. So by all means, go back rewatch the video again, and with the knowledge that you have now, I guarantee you’re going to have a bunch of aha moments where you’re going to start to understand how these things are jelling together, how inputs and mixes and logical switches and special functions all work together. Our bottom line goal for this video, uh, was to be able to push all of the decisions to channel 11 so that we can do what we need to do in the next video, which is tie it in with beta flight and channel 11 is going to be our linchpin channel because that’s, that’s the channel that we’re going to use on the adjustment screen, so that we could do nine different succinct tasks based on the one channel.
If you really want to be able to tune your PID in flight on the fly with just three switches, please join me in the next video so that we can tie a big bow on this thing and beta flight beyond that. We’re going to make it even better by tying this whole thing in with the beta flight louis’ scripts. All right. So let’s move this sucker down. I’m Steve. I hope you found value in the video. If you did, did please like comment, subscribe, share all that kind of stuff and join me in the next video. See you there.