The first thing you want to do when setting up a drone is binding the receiver and transmitter so you can control it. In this tutorial, I will show you how to bind a Frsky receiver to the Taranis or Horus radio.
When you have a new receiver (RX), you first have to bind it to the transmitter (TX), so they can “talk” to each other. You only have to do it once. You only have to do it again when you’ve updated the firmware on either the receiver or transmitter module.
The same procedure should apply to most Frsky receivers and transmitters, including:
- Receivers: R-XSR, XSR, X4R-SB, XM+, X8R and more
- Radios: Taranis X9D, QX7, X-Lite and Horus X10S and more
Binding R9 series receivers (such as the R9MM) to the R9M is also the same, you just need to use the bind option under “External Module”.
Table of Content
Powering Receiver
The receiver needs to be powered on during binding. I recommend wiring the receiver to your flight controller first, as this is the easiest way to do. Otherwise you can also power your receiver with a 5V power source.
Here is an example wiring diagram. For binding, SBUS and Smart Port are not necessary, but it’s fine to leave them connected if you want. All you need are the 5V and ground wires.
Binding Frsky RX to TX
Turn on your Taranis, go to the “Model Setup” page by pressing the Menu button once. Scroll down and find “Internal Module”, select D16 mode for any X-series receivers which includes R-XSR, X4R-SB, XSR, XM+, XM and X8R. For D-series receivers such as D4R-II, select D8 mode.
Press [Bind], and you shall be prompted 4 options. Just choose “Ch1-8 Telem ON”. (but if you are curious what other options mean, this post explains the differences)
Your Taranis should begin to make an intermittent chirping sound, indicating it’s in bind mode.
Every Frsky RX has a physical bind button on it. It’s sometimes labelled “F/S”, because it’s used to set receiver failsafe as well.
Hold down the Failsafe button while powering up your receiver, the red LED should start blinking indicating it’s in bind mode. You can now release the button.
The binding should not take more than a few seconds.
Exit bind mode on the Taranis, and disconnect the power on the receiver. Power up the receiver again without pressing the bind button. You should get a solid green LED, indicating the binding was successful and the TX is communicating with RX.
Failing to Bind RX to TX?
If you cannot bind the RX to TX after several attempts, here are the potential causes:
- RX and TX module might have mist-matched firmware, i.e. EU-LBT and International firmware. If you know which firmware you have on the Taranis, just flash your RX to the correct firmware and try again
- You might have selected the wrong mode, i.e. D8 and D16
- Bind button is damaged on the receiver
Configuring Receiver in Flight Controller
For X-series receivers, the two popular receiver protocols are SBUS and FPort, the setup is slightly different.
FPort has advantages over SBUS, as it only uses 1 wire for both control link and telemetry link – it’s basically combining SBUS and Smartport into one single wire. The downside is you have to flash your receiver firmware in order to use FPort. If you want to avoid firmware flashing, just use SBUS and SPort. They are more or less identical in terms of performance.
- This guide explains how to setup SBUS and SmartPort
- And this guide explains how to setup FPort
Setup Failsafe
Once the receiver is bound to the radio successfully, don’t forget to setup failsafe on the receiver.
What’s Next?
All done and working? Check out our Betaflight Setup guide to see what else you need to setup in Betaflight for your first flight.