There are many Taranis X9D hacks, DIY mods, tutorials and upgrades! I spent a long time making this great compilation of resources related to Taranis X9D TX radio transmitter. Some of the modifications might also work for other Frsky TX including the Taranis Q X7 and Horus X10 and X12.

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The Taranis X9D is undeniably one of the most powerful radio transmitters you can get for the money. The software is very flexible and it has a large user community, there are new ideas and hacks being discovered everyday for the Taranis. I will keep updating this post and I hope this post is useful to you.

Index of Content

• Tutorials – step by step guides to enhance performance and unlock unique features
• Taranis X9D Hacks, Mods and Upgrades – DIY modifications and hardware upgrades to bring the Taranis to the next level
• Tips and Tricks – discovering easy and useful tricks with using the radio
  1. Change backlight colour
  2. Custom Boot Screen
  3. Personalized boot sound
  4. Custom Model Image
  5. Better Sound Pack

Tutorials for Taranis and OpenTX

1. Using a switch to start and stop a Timer
2. Setup Throttle Timer to determine when to land
3. Adjust Taranis Gimbals Tension – making changes to the tension of your sticks, it might improve the smoothness of your flying
4. Flash Frsky Taranis OpenTX Firmware – how to update your Taranis with the latest OpenTX firmware for the latest features and bug fixes
5. Create and Play Custom Voice Sound Track – shows you how to create custom human voice sound tracks and play it on the Taranis
6. Play Music With Taranis TX and Adjust Volume – turns your Taranis TX into a music player, with the ability of adjusting volume
7. Use your Taranis to flash D4R-II and X4R-SB RX firmware – you can use your Taranis radio as a firmware flashing tool to update firmware on the D4R-II and X4R-SB receivers
8. Get RSSI in PPM/SBUS Channel – you can setup the Taranis to get RSSI using one of the spare PPM or SBUS channels
9. Setup a switch to report battery voltage & simple low voltage alarm
10. Using Taranis logical switches to set up reliable voltage alarm
11. Adjusting channel mid points and end points
12. Setup Throttle Curve
13. How to log GPS coordinates and other telemetry data

Taranis X9D Hacks and DIY Mods

1. M9 Gimbals Upgrade – Frsky released these “Hall effect” upgrade gimbals specially for the X9D
2. TX Module for Brushed Toy Quadcopters – with this external RF module, it allows you to bind other toy micro quads to the Taranis TX
3. Upgrade #1: Custom shell, color switch sleeves, stick ends – some upgrades to the aesthetics and functionality
4. Upgrade #2: holder, rubber pads, strap hook, trim button – more upgrades to the aesthetics and handling
5. Taranis speaker mod – replaces the original speaker for clearer and louder sound
6. Antenna Mod – Replacing 2dB antenna with RP-SMA pigtail so it’s possible to use higher gain 5dB antenna, or other types of antenna
7. Custom inlays
8. Upgrade LiPo Battery | Use 18650 Li-Ion Batteries
9. Taranis 6 position switch mod – coming soon
10. Color switch nuts – coming soon

Tips and Tricks

The following tricks are based on OpenTX 2.2 or newer firmware interface.

Change screen backlight colour

Taranis X9D Plus allows you to change backlight colour. Some of the TX come with white/amber (red) backlight, while others are white/blue. If you didn’t get to choose which version you want when purchasing, this would be random. If you want the other color, you will have to swap it out yourself.

Here is how to adjust backlight colour:

1. Enter “Radio Setup” by doing a Long Press of the “Menu” Button
2. Scroll down to half way, and find “Backlight > Color”
3. Adjust color bar to desired color

Custom boot screen (custom splash screen)

You can replace the OpenTX screen with your own logo, which appears as you power on your transmitter. You can upload the image as part of the OpenTX firmware update.

The required image format and size for the QX7 is monochrome BMP 128×64 pixels. For X9D the resolution should be 212×64 pixels.

See this guide on how to flash OpenTX firmware to Taranis.

Custom Model Image

In the home screen of a particular model, you can choose to display a model image in the center. And you can also design and use your own image.

Image format requirement: 64×32 pixels monochrome BMP file.

Name the image file to whatever you want (as short as possible, avoid symbols), and put it in “/IMAGES/” folder.

Now you can select the model image file in your model setup, 2nd option.

Custom boot sound

Go to this directory in your Taranis SD card: “\SOUNDS\en\SYSTEM“, and replace “hello.wav” with your favourite sound track. See this guide on how to create your own sound tracks for the Taranis transmitter.

Note: the boot sound used to be called “tada.wav”, but OpenTX has changed the naming structure to their system sound files since v2.2.

Custom Sound Pack

The stock sounds of the Taranis lady is a bit too manly, not to mention the low quality too. There is a sexier sound pack you can download from OpenTX’s website:

http://open-txu.org/v2-2-resources-2/

Download the “Amber Sound pack”, decompress the file, and replace all the files in “\SOUNDS\en“. The new sounds are a lot clearer as well IMO, definitely worth changing over.

Other older sound packs won’t work on the latest OpenTX because they have made changes to the sound files names in version 2.2. So make sure you get the most up to date resources.