CleanFlight stick deadband

Have you experienced slow side drift on your quadcopter? Or maybe a yaw drift? To achieve a stable hover of your quadcopter first your RC Roll, Pitch and Yaw channels must be at the default midpoint of 1500μs. To achieve this, calibrate your transmitter sticks (if you have never done this) and then use the transmitter trims.

Next step: do your channels values fluctuate slightly? Ok, that is normal. No transmitter is perfect and sends perfect Midpoint-Signals when the sticks are centered. That’s why the “deadband” feature is so useful. The flight controller ignores the deadband value (in μs) and don’t consider it as valid. For example: my midpoint Pitch value jumps up to 1502. If I set a deadband value “2”, then the controller will ignore the slight fluctuation and think midpoint is still 1500 and not 1502.

Go to the CLI-Tab and type following commands:

Cleanflight_RX_Deadband

set deadband = 2

set yaw_deadband = 2

save

The “deadband” parameter is for both Roll and Pitch axes. The “yaw_deadband” parameter just for the Yaw axe. That’s it. Now your quadcopter should be perfectly stable in the air. If you have any questions, leave me a comment.

  1. Hi. I used zmr250. No problem in the first hover. It begins to pull forward left after a while. I made the deadband and stick calibration setting. I have done many times in the ESC calibrasyon. but the problem still not restored. Could you help.

    1. Hey Melih, when you connect to Cleanflight Configurator, on the Receiver-Tab: do you have the Pitch and Roll at 1500? If the answer is yes, you have calibrated your transmitter right. If not, try to trim. You can also try to calibrate the accelerometer. Let me know if this helps. Best, Sergey

      1. yes, Pitch and Roll 1500. I made the accelerometer calibration. I try to trim.but I’m doing right backward trim. after a while, although it still left going forward. I can see that the air left front wing slightly down curved stand.

        1. Pitch and Roll at 1500 is good. After you have setup the deadband, have you saved? Do you fly in Angle mode or Horizon? Hope your center of gravity is not far away from the copters center, right?

  2. I have tried to trim the midpoint to 1500, but the value is either 1497 or 1503, for Yaw,
    Roll, Pitch all the same, cant come to the dot. When i mount the propeller and flight it, the quadcopter is hard to hover. I use Spektrum DX6. Can you please help me?

    1. Have you tried to very quickly/gently press the trim buttons? You could also try to calibrate your Spectrum again. Otherwise you can set the deadband to 4. With “hard to hover” you mean it is hard to get it at the same altitude without going up and down? This is quite normal. On your TX you can adjust the throttle curve to be more smooth around the middle point. DIY quadcopters are not like the drones by DJI, who maintain altitude. Best, Sergey

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