Betaflight Camera Control Setup and Troubleshooting

Betaflight Camera Control Setup and Troubleshooting

Camera control via Betaflight is a fantastic way to adjust your camera settings from your R/C Controller, but it can sometimes be abit tricky to get working properly. 
Since this is an open source software feature, we are only able to provide limited support to you in this area.

In order for this to work, you will need to have a flight controller that officially supports this, otherwise you will ned to add an extra resistor/capacitor to the camera.  Please make sure to follow the official wiki about how to setup your camera control wire between the flight controller and your camera - FPV Camera Control (Joystick Emulation) · betaflight/betaflight Wiki (github.com)

Camera Control Settings and Values

Once everything is connected, the best place to start would be to look up camera if it is listed on RC groups thread as it will include the required parameter values for your camera.  If not you will need to find these yourself (or you can try to ask the manufacturer).

Troubleshooting Camera Control

  1. First of all, make sure resource list CLI command lists camera_control as allocated.
  2. If your camera doesn't work, chances are you have to adjust values for key delay, reference voltage or internal resistance. Defaults work fine for most HS1177-derivatives, if you have issues, try changing the key delay value first.
  3. Adjust the values for camera control settings as shown below via the Betaflight CLI

Adjusting Key Delay (camera_Control_Key_Delay)

If you have multi-click occurrences, decrease the delay by 10-15%, if your clicks don't register consistently - try increasing it instead. Foxeer Arrow v3 is known to work best with delay of 125 ms.

Check Reference Voltage (camera_control_ref_voltage)

If the key delay does not solve it, the next thing is to set the reference voltage Just measure the voltage between OSD and GND pins on the camera while it is powered. 

Check Camera Internal Resistance (camera_control_internal_resistance)

The betaflight wiki shows you how to work this out, but it can be complicated, hopefully you can find your camera as listed in the RCgroups thread linked at the start of this article!