The timer in Taranis TX is a useful feature we can use to keep track of how long we have flown, and help us decide when we should land. In this tutorial I will show you how to setup up a timer on a Taranis radio, that you can start, stop, pause and even reset using your arm switch.

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This tutorial should work on any OpenTX compatible radios including the Taranis Q X7, X9D, Horus X10 and X12.

Don’t forget to check out our many other Taranis Tutorials and Hacks.

Limitations

Despite being the simplest method, a timer is probably the least accurate way to decide when you should land a quadcopter. In my opinion it’s more useful for quadcopters that fly in constant speed and have consistent amp draw in every flight.

On racing drones, throttle is constantly changing and current draw can fluctuates a lot. Perhaps it’s better to use other methods, such as the “throttle timer” which is also relatively simple to setup.

Setup a Timer – Triggered by Arm Switch

First of all, I want to show you how to setup a most basic timer in the Taranis.

Enter the Model Setup page, scroll down to Timer 1.

• Change the first option “Off” to your Arm switch position, and set your estimated flight time
• Persistent = Off – when set to other options it will just keep counting after it passes 0
• Minute Call = Enable – It warns you every whole minute
• Count Down = Voice 5s – it counts down in the last 5 seconds with human voice

You should now see the timer on your home screen.

You can activate the timer using your arm switch (SD switch down in this case), which is really handy.

To reset the timer you need to long press enter, choose “Reset”, and “Reset Timer 1″… Not really convenient, read on to learn how we can improve that.

Reset Timer Automatically when Disarm

To reset the timer automatically when you disarm, you can simply assign a function to your “disarm” switch to do it.

In Special Function, create a new function, select your disarm switch position. Choose “Reset” function, and Timer 1. Don’t forget the check the box at the end to enable this function.

Now when you disarm, it will also reset the Timer.

Preventing Timer from Starting When Throttle is Down

Aren’t we having fun :) Let’s make it even more sophisticated.

There are times when you arm your quad, and you don’t take off immediately. But your timer is already counting and we don’t want that. One way to fix it is to use the arm switch together with the throttle level to trigger the timer.

This will require some help from Logical Switches.

Here is what they do:

• L01 – the switch is on when throttle is higher than -90 (=5%, the throttle scale is -100 to 100)
• L02 – the switch is on when SD switch is down (the quad is armed), and L01 is on
• L03 is turned on by L02, once it’s turned on it will stay on until we flip SD switch to the middle position

Now go back to the Model Setup page, and use L03 as the switch for Timer 1.

Now the timer is activated only when the quad is armed, and we move our throttle up at least 5%.

We can also pause the timer if we move the arm switch to the centre position, this is useful if I just want to land momentarily and take off again without changing battery.

And finally the timer is reset when I disarm by flipping the switch to the top position.