LED Strip

Rotorflight drives up to 32 addressable WS2811/WS2812 LEDs from one data pin. Each LED can have its own colour and function: orientation lights, battery and arming warnings, or scale lighting -- navigation lights, anti-collision beacons, strobes and landing lights.

This guide sets up three scale lights. The LED Strip tab page explains every option.

Wiring

Each LED has four connections: 5 V, ground, data in and data out. The flight controller's LED pin goes to data in of the first LED; its data out goes to data in of the next, and so on.

WS2812 strips (30, 60 or 144 LEDs per metre) are handy for testing and for lighting a boom. Individual 5 mm and 8 mm WS2811 LEDs suit scale lighting. With more than a few LEDs, power them from a separate 5 V supply.

The LED pin

The flight controller needs a pin assigned to LED_STRIP, with a timer and DMA. Some boards have one; on others, repurpose a pin -- with the Remap FC tab (2.4), or the CLI snippets below.

Then turn on LED_STRIP under Features on the Configuration tab and Save and Reboot. The LED Strip tab appears.

Three scale lights

Place the LEDs

1. On the LED Strip tab, switch to the wire-ordering mode.
2. Click three squares on the grid, in turn. They're numbered 0, 1, 2 -- the order they're wired in.
3. Give each the Color function. Save.

LED 0 -- green navigation light with strobe

1. Select LED 0 and left-click green in the palette. It lights up.
2. Turn on Blink with one tick: the LED briefly goes dark once per cycle.
3. Right-click white: the dark moment becomes a white strobe flash.

If the LEDs are too bright, lower Overall brightness under LED Strip Global Settings.

LED 1 -- red anti-collision beacon

1. Select LED 1, turn on Blink and tick a few adjacent steps.
2. Right-click red. The LED flashes red.

LED 2 -- landing light

1. Select LED 2, turn on Fade to alt color, and left-click white.
2. Set the Profile to Status Alt: the LED dims. With Fade rate at 10 it fades slowly.
3. To switch it from the radio, add an adjustment with LED Profile Selection on a switch: one position for Status (light on), one for Status Alt (light off).

Save.

A PicoBlade LED bus

For scale builds, a small bus of 4-pin Molex PicoBlade headers makes it easy to plug individual LEDs in and out.

1. Glue some 4-pin PicoBlade headers side by side.
2. Bend the 5 V and ground pins to form two rails, and solder them.
3. Bend each header's data out pin to the next header's data in pin, and solder.
4. Wire 5 V, ground and data in to the flight controller, and insulate the underside with hot glue or epoxy.

Ordinary (non-addressable) LEDs can go at the end of the bus, on 2-pin connectors.

Board snippets

CLI snippets to free a pin for the LED strip on some Rotorflight flight controllers. Paste into the CLI; each ends with save.

Radiomaster NexusFlyDragon F722FrSky VANTAC RF007Flywing HELI405

Port B's TX6 as the LED pin (RX6 keeps working):

resource SERIAL_TX 6 NONE
resource LED_STRIP 1 C07
timer C07 AF3
dma pin C07 0
save

Or RX6 instead: the same with SERIAL_RX 6 and pin C06.

The built-in status LED (pin B08) can't be chained, so move the LED strip to another pin. SCL:

resource I2C_SCL 1 NONE
resource LED_STRIP 1 B06
timer B06 AF2
dma pin B06 0
save

SDA works the same with I2C_SDA and pin B07. The RPM-S pin (5 V, fine for a few LEDs) on V2 / V2.2:

resource LED_STRIP 1 A15
timer A15 AF1
dma pin A15 0
save

(V1: pin A08.)

The SBUS out pin. Strips usually need 5 V -- use port A or C's 5 V, not a higher BEC voltage.

resource SERIAL_RX 1 NONE
resource LED_STRIP 1 B07
timer B07 AF2
dma pin B07 0
feature LED_STRIP
save

The SBUS pin:

resource SERIAL_RX 2 NONE
resource LED_STRIP 1 A03
timer A03 AF2
dma pin A03 1
save