Calibrating your Drone ESC in BetaFlight

Calibrating an ESC for your drone involves teaching the ESC what range of throttle inputs it should respond to. It needs to know what PWM (Pulse Width Modulation) value on the throttle channel corresponds with commanding the motor to be off, and what PWM value corresponds to full throttle. These values are stored within the ESC.

Figure 1. BetaFlight Configurator — Motors

The Process

The first step is to open up BetaFlight Configurator (Figure 1) and connect your flight controller to your PC via USB. Make sure that the propellers have been removed and the LiPo battery is disconnected (Figure 2).

Figure 2. Drone connected to PC, battery disconnected and Props OFF.

ln BetaFlight Configurator, select the Motors tab, click on the button saying that you understand the risks, and move the Master throttle slider to 100% as shown in Figure 1.

Now connect the LiPo battery and you will hear a series of tones (Figure 3) from the ESC. Wait for them to stop and then bring the Master throttle to 0%. You will hear another series of tones from the ESC. When they stop, your ESC is calibrated.