User Manual
explanation clear: If you are 5m away from the model it only takes another 5m to reduce RSSI by 6dB, but if you
are 600m away from the model it will then take another 600m to reduce the value by the "same" 6dB.
Loss of control will happen when RSSI reaches a value of about 38, so setting an alarm at 10 is useless. From
the above explanation you can see that between the default critical alarm (42) and usual practical loss of control
we have a margin of about 4dB, or range factor of around 1.5. The alarms are thus rather conservative, and in
normal conditions even if you heard the critical alarm you would still be far from losing control (you should be at
around >1000m distance, with another 500m to spare). Intermittent loss due to local fades and antenna
orientation mismatches could however get more and more frequent.
As mentioned the default alarms are deemed safe for usual line of sight flight, but for example with FPV setups
especially when coupled with automatic return to home systems and properly configured failsafes the safety
margin can be reduced and you should be able to extract more or less double of the standard range out of the
system. It is up to you to (safely!) experiment as once the margin gets reduced influence of external interference
sources will start to become more noticeable, such as it is impossible to predict the behavior of a given
installation in a particular model.
The Taranis also has an alarm that will warn you of the telemetry downlink being lost or recovered. The
telemetry link behaves similarly to the control link and is transmitted with the same power level, so it should
have essentially similar range, and the conservative alarms for the control link described above should ensure
the telemetry link is always available. However, it is possible that for any reason (manufacturing tolerances
resulting in slightly different range of the up and down links, local interference sources in close proximity to the
radio,...) the telemetry link is lost prematurely, in which case a warning is essential as you need to be aware that
any telemetry-based alarms will NOT sound anymore. Obviously, if the radio can't pick up the RSSI info from
the receiver it won't be able to warn you about low RSSI. Similarly, if you are for example relying on information
from an onboard voltage or current sensor to know when to land, the alarms you set for this won't sound if
telemetry data is unavailable. So be aware of the "Telemetry lost" audio alert and act accordingly, whether by
falling back to other sources of info or by turning back to land and investigate the reason for the loss of
telemetry feed.
Note that when the radio and receiver are very close to each other (usually <1m) you may get spurious
"telemetry lost" and "telemetry recovered" alarms. This is not a malfunction and will stop when the 2 devices are
separated.
The rest of the telemetry subject in itself has mostly been covered already. The telemetry settings page allows
you to configure the different parameters that have been explained in the menu overviews. The telemetry views
will show the data as configured. If you have a microSD card in your radio, you can use the "SD Logs" custom
function to record the telemetry data while in flight. It can then be played back in OpenTX companion or opened
in spreadsheet programs.
Audio
One of the major features of the radio is the speech output function. Provided a microSD card (FAT12/16/32
format) loaded with the sound pack available for download from within OpenTX companion is inserted in the slot
in the battery compartment, the radio will be able to play audio files in response to various events like reaching
trim center/ends and activation of a switch (physical or custom), to play a background music file, and last but not
least to announce every available value (telemetry, parameter, stick position) in clear voice. Custom sounds can
be placed in the SOUNDS/(selected_language) folder of the card and will be available for use (name must be 8
characters at most, not counting the .wav extension, and with no special characters). Language is set in the
radio general settings and can be changed on the fly as long as the pack for that language is loaded on the
card.
ZIP files with the standard voice packs can be downloaded from within OpenTX companion, or here. Extract the
ZIP file to the root of the SD card, and it will create the necessary subdirectories (e.g. SOUNDS/en for the
English pack). If you wish to create your own files, the required format is:
● WAV, 8 or 16 bit, Mono
● 8, 16 or 32kHz sample rate
● PCM, u-law or a-law compression
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